Sunday, January 11/2025

Courtesy Sina Zahourkari

Lapta is a village that grew. Origins shrouded in myth and ancient history. Legend—or wishful thinking—says it was founded by Spartans 3000 BCE. However, that is long before there was a written Greek language and there is archaeological evidence of settlement in Lapta in Neolithic times.

We’d been thinking about this church because you can see the tower from our flat. J points out that my renewed awareness of the tower is down to the fact that someone has cut down the palm tree that was beginning to obscure our view of the church. So we took a walk the other day to get a closer look. It would only be about a hundred metres south of us but that through an impossible tangle of shrubbery, walls and private property. About three hundred metres by road. 

Church on a bit of a plateau. Well kept exterior. Freshly painted doors. But no plaques or signs in any language. There’s a bit of a parking area and a home backs onto the lot with a fair amount of household detritus including an elderly shopping cart spilling out into the precincts. Take a couple of photos but are none the wiser.

Then today come across a list of the churches and mosques in the Lapta area. Fourteen churches listed. Well, it’s a sprawling area and none of the churches will be functioning as churches now. Some may be ruins. But first in the list is Agios [Saint] Theodoros.  Accompanied by the photo at top, so clearly our church. Apparently built in 1834, although none of the scanty information looks particularly authoritative. 

It was the late Bruce Hutchison who said that Canada was a land with too little history and too much geography. Well, Cyprus is the opposite. And we have much more discovering to do.