Ghost town in Cyprus: empty fashionable hotels and barbed wire

Cyprus is a beautiful island in the eastern Mediterranean, which is famous for its resorts. This is one of the most popular holiday destinations for citizens of the European Union and the inhabitants of our country. But few people know that along with luxury hotels and luxurious beaches, there is another Cyprus. Abandoned houses and hotels, empty shop windows, deserted streets and beaches. This is how the recently flourishing quarter of Varosha in the city of Famagusta looks like.

The city of Famagusta is located on the southeast coast of Cyprus. In the 60s of the last century Famagusta was one of the most famous and elite resorts of the Mediterranean Sea. Many hotels and shopping centers decorated the coast, and the beaches were filled with vacationers. But in order to understand how this magnificent world collapsed overnight, you need to look into the history of Cyprus.

The island was inhabited by ancient Greek colonists more than 3,000 years ago. Throughout its long history, the island was ruled by the empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Order of the Templars, the French Lusignan family, the Venetians, the Ottoman Empire, and finally in 1925 became a colony of Great Britain. In 1960, the history of modern Cyprus began, when, as a result of the war of liberation, an independent state was formed on the island - the Republic of Cyprus. True, two British military bases are still located there: Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

But peace in Cyprus did not last long. The complex multinational composition of the island caused the tragedy. Local conflicts between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots moved to the highest level, which led to a political crisis and armed clashes.

As a result of this conflict, the city of Famagusta was divided into two parts: Turkish Cypriots live in one, and the other is uninhabited. When Turkish troops invaded the city in the summer of 1974, more than 25,000 ethnic Greeks lived in it, and the tourist complex included more than 100 hotels with 11,000 beds. Residential homes and hotels were abandoned. People left the city in a hurry and terrible panic, under the shots and the roar of aircraft.

Today in Cyprus, divided into two parts, the UN peacekeeping contingent is located, which provides a fragile peace on this long-suffering island. The district of Varosha in the city of Famagusta looks worse than the one affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Excursion buses do not go here, and the quarter itself is fenced with barbed wire, it is forbidden to visit. But lovers of creepy shots and adventurers still get into this ghost town, washed by the azure Mediterranean Sea and making a terrifying impression.