Guides ·Day trips

Getting to Nicosia from the coast

Nicosia, officially Lefkosia, is the only major Cypriot city with no sea, which is exactly why it feels different from your beach base. From Limassol it is 85 km on the A1, about 50 minutes; from Larnaca 50 km on the A2, about 35 minutes; from Paphos 150 km and roughly 1 hour 45 minutes. Intercity Buses run from all three for €4 one way, and Kapnos Airport Shuttle links Larnaca Airport to Nicosia's Solomou Square for about €8 with departures roughly every hour.

Drive in and park outside the walls. The Solomou Square and D’Avila bastion car parks charge around €2 for three hours and put you 200 m from Ledra Street. The historic centre inside the sixteenth-century Venetian walls is barely 1.5 km across, so once parked you walk everywhere. Note that much of the old city closes down on Sunday, and shops in general shut early on Wednesday afternoons, so a weekday visit, ideally Tuesday to Saturday, gets you far more open doors.

The Venetian walls and the museums

The walls, built by the Venetians in 1567 with eleven heart-shaped bastions and three gates, still define the city. Famagusta Gate on the eastern side has been converted into a municipal cultural centre and is free to walk into; the vaulted passage is 35 m long. The Cyprus Museum on Mouseiou Street, entry €4.50, closed Mondays, is the island's national archaeological collection: the terracotta army of some 2,000 votive figures from Agia Irini, the Roman bronze Aphrodite of Soloi and Neolithic material from Choirokoitia.

Two smaller museums are worth the detour. The Leventis Municipal Museum on Hippocratous Street is free and tells the city's story from prehistory through Ottoman and British rule with real skill; allow an hour. The Byzantine Museum in the Archbishop's Palace complex on Archiepiskopou Kyprianou Square, €4, holds icons recovered from looted northern churches, including sixth-century mosaics from Kanakaria. Nearby, the Ethnographic Museum in the old Archbishopric occupies the oldest surviving building in the old city.

Crossing at Ledra Street

Ledra Street is the pedestrianised main shopping spine, and at its northern end sits the crossing point that opened in 2008. It operates 24 hours for pedestrians. You need a passport or an EU national identity card; the check takes two or three minutes on each side and there is no fee. Carry the document itself, not a photo of it. The Ledra Palace crossing, a few hundred metres west, also takes pedestrians and sits beside the UN buffer zone.

Before you cross, climb the Shacolas Tower Observatory on Ledra Street, on the 11th floor of a department store, entry around €2.50, for the clearest overhead view of the whole divided city and the buffer zone running through it. On the southern side, the Faneromeni quarter and Ledra Street's side lanes hold the independent cafés, bookshops and small bars that university students use, with a frappé at €3.50 and a beer at €4 rather than the €7 you would pay on a marina.

The northern half of the old city

Ten minutes on foot beyond the checkpoint you reach the Büyük Han, a caravanserai built in 1572 around a square courtyard with a small octagonal mosque on pillars in the middle. It is free to enter, now full of craft workshops and courtyard cafés, and it is the single most photogenic building in Nicosia. Coffee there costs the equivalent of about €2. A block away, the Bandabuliya covered market sells spices, cheese and produce under an iron roof.

The Selimiye Mosque was built as the Gothic cathedral of St Sophia between 1209 and 1326 and converted after 1570; the flying buttresses and rose window survive under the minarets, and visitors are welcome outside prayer times with shoulders and knees covered. Around it, the Bedesten, a former Byzantine church turned market hall, and the Lapidary Museum fill out the block. Prices across the crossing are lower, but many small businesses are cash-only, so bring €30 to €50 in small notes; larger restaurants take cards.

Eating and shopping in the capital

Nicosia eats better and cheaper than the resorts because it feeds locals. Laiki Geitonia, the restored lane cluster just inside the walls near Eleftheria Square, does tourist-facing meze at €22 to €28 a head. Better value sits in the Faneromeni and Trikoupi streets area, where a plate of sheftalia or souvla with salad and chips is €10 to €13 and a full mixed meze €20 to €25. For coffee and bakery, the lanes off Onasagorou Street open from 08:00.

For shopping, Ledra and Onasagorou are the pedestrian high streets, while Makariou Avenue outside the walls is the mainstream retail corridor. Eleftheria Square, redesigned by Zaha Hadid Architects and completed in 2021, links the two across the moat and is worth seeing as architecture. If you want something Cypriot to carry home, the old city sells Lefkara lace, silver filigree and copperware; expect €20 to €60 for a decent small lace piece and much more for the handmade heirloom sizes.

Timing, weather and getting back

Nicosia is inland and gets brutally hot: July and August routinely hit 38 to 40°C, ten degrees above the coast, with no sea breeze. Visit in spring or autumn if you can, or arrive at 09:00 and treat the museums as your midday shade. Winter is genuinely pleasant at 15 to 18°C and the old city is at its best empty. Museum closing times cluster around 16:00 to 17:00, and the Cyprus Museum shuts on Mondays.

Plan the return before you relax. Intercity coaches back to Limassol and Larnaca generally stop running between 18:00 and 20:00, and there is no train. A taxi to Limassol runs €90 to €120, to Larnaca €55 to €75. If you are combining Nicosia with Kyrenia in a single day, cross on foot by 11:00 at the latest, allow 40 minutes each way to the north coast by taxi, and be back at the checkpoint by 19:00 to keep the evening calm.

Frequently asked questions

What people ask before they set off on this one.

Rooms worth pairing with this guide.

Nicosia Hilton Nicosia

4.5/5 €224/ night

24 with a full page

More guides to Cyprus

All guides

Itineraries · 9 min read 48 hours in Cyprus

Two days, one sea-facing base and roughly 180 km of driving: Limassol seafront, the Roman theatre at Kourion, the Paphos mosaics and a sunset at Aphrodite's Rock.

Itineraries · 10 min read One week in Cyprus

Seven days, three hotel bases and about 550 km of driving, from the Paphos mosaics and the Akamas to Troodos monasteries, Limassol wine villages and the divided capital.

Itineraries · 9 min read Cyprus in 3 days on a budget

Three days on the Cyprus coast for around €280 per person including a bed by the sea, using €1.50 city buses, €4 intercity coaches and archaeological sites that cost €2.50.

Find a hotel