House of Dionysus

The House of Dionysus is a large Roman townhouse in ancient Nea Paphos whose floors are covered with some of the finest mosaics in the eastern Mediterranean. Of its roughly 2,000 square metres, more than 500 are paved with polychrome pictures in small stone tesserae: gods, lovers, hunters, animals and seasons, laid out room by room around a central courtyard. The mosaics were found by chance in 1962, when a farmer ploughing his field struck them, and this was the first mosaic-floored house to be uncovered in Paphos.

The house dates from the Roman imperial period, around the late second or third century AD, when Nea Paphos was the capital of Cyprus, and it probably belonged to a member of the city's ruling elite. It is built around an atrium with a central impluvium, the basin that caught rainwater, surrounded by a colonnaded walk. Bedrooms, baths and a small garden court for animals lay on the east side, kitchens and workshops on the west, and the main entrance opened from the street at the southwest corner. Hunting scenes run along three sides of the atrium. In the western portico, four mythological panels show Pyramus and Thisbe, Poseidon and Amymone, Apollo pursuing Daphne, and Dionysus with Akme and Ikarios, the Athenian who, in the myth, received the gift of wine and shared it with shepherds who had never tasted it. The reception room has the Triumph of Dionysus flanked by the Dioscuri, and other rooms hold Narcissus admiring his reflection, Ganymede carried off by the eagle, Phaedra and Hippolytus, a peacock and the Seasons. The many images of the wine god gave the house its modern name.

Nea Paphos was founded at the end of the fourth century BC by Nikokles, the last king of old Paphos, and became the island's capital under the Ptolemies and then under Rome. A run of destructive earthquakes in the fourth century AD sent the seat of government back to Salamis, and the city's great houses fell into ruin. Their remains, including the neighbouring houses of Aion, Theseus and Orpheus, now form the Paphos Archaeological Park, part of the Paphos World Heritage Site inscribed by UNESCO in 1980 together with the Tombs of the Kings and the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Kouklia.

Modern Paphos, on the southwest coast of Cyprus, has grown around the ancient site; its harbour quarter, Kato Paphos, lies directly beside the ruins.

Getting there

The house stands in the archaeological park in Kato Paphos, about 2.7 km from the centre of Paphos. The nearest airport is Paphos International Airport (PFO), about 9 km away.