Time Out Northern Cyprus guide

Expect giddy heights, calming walks and waxworks.

You could argue that the pace of life in Cyprus stems from a prolonged sense of limbo. Internationally, Turkey is still the only country that recognises the areas it occupies here as a legitimate state. But since the Republic of Cyprus’s EU accession, the north has been considered EU territory with a disputed foreign military presence, resulting in a distinctive atmosphere. It may take a few days to adjust to the relaxed pace, but it will be well worth it.

1 Befriend a donkey
Or rather don’t, as one of the few things to bring Turkish and Greek Cypriots together is the campaign to save the population of wild donkeys on Cyprus’s panhandle peninsula of Karpas. Home to a national park it also features miles of lonely beach and sand dunes.

2 Scare yourself
The Kyrenia mountain range is a sharp and jagged outcrop that dominates the north of the island and has been used as a natural defensive position by Byzantines, Crusaders, Venetian and Ottomans. The highest of the surviving fortifications, the castle of Buffo Vento (Venetian Italian for ‘defier of the winds’), is reached by a tortuous track that lacks such innovations as a safety fence or even tarmac. The views are utterly sensational, but take your eyes off the road to look at them and there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself hurtling down 1,000 feet of sheer rock face.

3 Get idle
Few trees exert the same spell as the Tree of Idleness, by the café in the centre of the village of Bellapais which features in Lawrence Durrell’s famous Cyprus travelogue ‘Bitter Lemons’. The English novelist stayed here in the mid-1950s before the island was divided at the beginning of the Greek Cypriot revolt against British rule and renovated a farm at the top of the hill. You are more likely to be passed by a motor scooter than the herd of cattle that regular thundered through the village when Durrell was in Bellapais, but come for the near idyllic ruins of the medieval abbey and the views over the coast and out across the water to the hulking ridge of Anatolia’s Taurus Mountains. Again, stunning views.

4 Check out a dummy
Few Turkish towns can long resist the urge to open an ethnographic museum and fill it with waxwork dummies in traditional Anatolian peasant dress. But Turkish Cyprus offers the fan of historical display through the medium of shop mannequins something different, in particular the gruesome display at Kyrenia (Girne) Castle showing the torture and imprisonment of a 12th century nobleman. There are waxwork prisoners with beards and loincloths, reproduction torture devices, wax work torturers with amusing hats, waxwork guards and, in one of the original pits, a particularly miserable waxwork victim of solitary confinement. On top of all that you can get an ice cream in the courtyard and there is a shipwreck museum in a separate part of the museum.

5 Eat fish
If the waxwork torture scenes give you an appetite then you are only minutes away from the fish restaurants of Kyrenia harbour, which line the quayside underneath the Venetian warehouse at the spot where the fishing boats unload their catch. Stick to the castle end of the harbour if you like very fresh fish and chilled grape, and the opposite end if you like bars where Russians smoke and listen to bangin’ techno.

6 Take a promenade
Dusk in Northern Cyprus can be spectacular and you don’t get a better view of the sun sliding into the sea than from the quayside in Girne (Kyrenia). In a Cypriot passarela, families comes out to stroll and enjoy the small playgrounds dotted along the shore, the best of which, if you’re a parent nearing the end of his or her tether, is at Kordonboyu Park, on the foreshore to the east of the harbour, where small bars overlook the swings and, over a cool drink you can catch, arguably, one of the best sunsets in the Mediterranean.

7 See the front line
Head for Nicosia and the Ledra crossing point in the Green Line that, since the 1974 war, marks the UN patrolled no man’s land between the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots in Europe’s last divided capital. Look out for the bullet-pocked Ledra Palace as you go through no man’s land. But if bullet holes aren’t your thing stay on the Turkish side of the line and enjoy the sensationally surreal Nicosia mosque, actually a gothic cathedral, which the Ottomans attached a minaret to when they took the city in the year 1570.

8 Have a look around
No need to run around looking for boutique hotels. Keep a lid on prices and book with a superior package provider and stay at one of many hotels on the strip between the mountains and the island’s northern coast. Although a Turkish ‘Dolmus’ taxi system operates in the island, car hire is the best option if you really want to make the most of the occasionally astounding scenery. Everything is pretty near, it’s only half an hour to drive over to Nicosia and another hour east from there to Salamis and Famagusta.