Conservation work begins at mosque and old school in Limassol’s Ayios Thomas

Conservation work at the mosque and the old schoolhouse in the Limassol district village of Ayios Thomas has begun, bi-communal technical committee on cultural heritage co-chairman Ali Tuncay said on Saturday.

He said the work is being carried out with financial support from the European Union and technical support from the United Nations development programme, and offered his thanks to “all the experts and workers involved for their contributions”.

Ayios Thomas is located between the villages of Avdimou and Anoyira in the west of the Limassol district and was historically a Turkish Cypriot village.

It served as a reception centre for Turkish Cypriots displaced from the nearby villages of Prastio and Yerovasa during intercommunal violence in the 1960s.

The village’s population fled to the British Akrotiri base in late 1974, and stayed there until 1975, when it was transferred via Turkey to the island’s north and resettled in the village of Kontea, which is located north of Pyla.

Now, the village is inhabited by a small number of Greek Cypriots who were displaced from the north, mostly from the Karpas peninsula.

The old school house in the village

At the beginning of this year, Tuncay had said that in addition to the work in Ayios Thomas, work will also begin at the mosque in the Limassol district village of Koilani, while tenders will also be put out for conservation work to begin on a total of 10 other mosques, five of which are in the Paphos district and five in the Larnaca district.

Additionally, he said, work is ongoing at the Panayia Apsinthonissa monastery, which is located between the Kyrenia district villages of Sychari and Vouno, and at the well known Apostolos Andreas monastery near Rizokarpaso, with five other restoration projects set to commence on religious buildings in the Kyrenia district before the end of the year.

He also said work will continue to conserve and restore non-religious buildings, including a historic stone house in the Famagusta district village of Limnia, the Diamante bastion of Famagusta’s Venetian city walls, and Lefka’s historic aqueducts.

In addition, he stressed that the committee’s work is “balanced between both sides” of the island and the cultural heritage of both the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities, as well as other communities on the island.

“We maintain a balance between both sides. Religious places of worship, baths, fountains, water mills, castle walls, archaeological sites, and cemeteries on both sides of Cyprus are considered as a whole and within the same framework,” he said.

He added that this approach “both makes us productive and builds trust”, and that “conducting similar projects in the north and the south in a balanced manner is vital for building trust between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots”.