Hotels near Archbishop's Palace & Byzantine Museum

The Archbishop's Palace complex on Archiepiskopou Kyprianou Square is a cluster of buildings that includes the Archbishop's official residence, the Byzantine Museum and Art Gallery, and a large bronze statue of Archbishop Makarios III - the first president of independent Cyprus. The palace itself is a neo-Byzantine construction from the 1960s (the original was burned during the 1974 coup) and is not open to the public, but the museum inside is one of the most important collections of Byzantine art outside of Greece and Turkey.

The Byzantine Museum houses over 230 icons spanning the 8th to 18th centuries, including fragments of mosaic panels looted from the Kanakaria Church in the north and recovered after an international legal battle. The collection also includes liturgical vestments, carved wooden crosses, and illuminated manuscripts. Admission is EUR 4. Allow about an hour. The adjacent National Struggle Museum documents the Greek-Cypriot independence movement against British rule (1955-1959) through photographs, documents, and personal effects.

Pro Tip: Ask at the ticket desk about the Kanakaria mosaics - the story of their theft, smuggling, and recovery is as compelling as the art itself. The 6th-century fragments are in a dedicated room on the upper floor.