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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Varosha: The abandoned tourist resort By Richard Hooper and Vibeke Venema BBC World Service
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In today's Magazine
Welcome to Varosha, the Mediterranean's best kept secret.
Miles of sand where it's just you and nature. Dozens of grand hotels where you'll have the pick of the rooms.
Just remember to pack your bolt cutters to make a hole in the fence - and watch out for the army patrols with orders to shoot on sight.
Before the division of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha - a resort in Famagusta - was booming. The rich and famous were drawn by some of the best beaches on the island. Richard Burton and Brigitte Bardot all dropped by - the Argo Hotel on JFK Avenue was said to be Elizabeth Taylor's favourite.
"Anyone who comes from Varosha has a romanticised notion of it," says Vasia Markides, 34, an American Greek-Cypriot whose mother grew up there. "They talk about it being the hub of art and intellectual activity. They describe it as the French Riviera of Cyprus."
But 40 years ago, after years of inter-ethnic violence culminating in a coup inspired by Greece's ruling military junta, Turkey invaded Cyprus and occupied the northern third of the island.
As its troops approached Varosha, a Greek-Cypriot community, the inhabitants fled, intending to return when the situation calmed down. However, the resort was fenced off by the Turkish military and has been a ghost town ever since. A UN resolution of 1984 calls for the handover of Varosha to UN control and prohibits any attempt to resettle it by anyone other than those who were forced out.
One of them was Markides' mother Emily - she had just got married and her wedding presents were still in the attic when they abandoned the family home. Others tell stories of pots left cooking on stoves, of lives stopped in mid-frame.
Varosha hotel corridor
In 2003, travel restrictions were eased for the first time, allowing Cypriots on both sides to cross the UN Buffer Zone, commonly known as the "Green Line".
"The picture that I had in my mind was of a kind of paradise," Vasia Markides says of the day when she returned to peer across the wire at her ancestral home for the first time. "But it felt like some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare.
"You're seeing nature take over. Prickly pear bushes have overrun the entire six square kilometres. There are trees that have sprouted through living rooms. It's a ghost town."
Ermou Street, Varosha
Signs warn tourists peering across the fence that "photos and movies are forbidden." Trespassers risk death. Exiled residents regularly pin love-letters and flowers to the barbed wire.
Other than Turkish soldiers, few have ventured inside. Those that have describe extraordinary sights. A car dealership still stocked with 1974 cars, window displays of mannequins dressed in long-gone fashions, the sand dunes that have encroached over the seafront with rare sea turtles nesting in them.
Pictures of the devastation circulate online but the photographers won't always admit to taking them.
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Empty beaches - but enter at your peril
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Anything of value is likely to have been looted long ago and the infrastructure is now damaged beyond repair. But Markides has big plans for Varosha.
"From the moment I saw it, I felt driven to see this place revive," she says. "You could feel the energy, its potential, the energy that was once there."
Life asserts itself as nature takes over
Now living in New York, Markides is spearheading a proposal to turn Varosha into an eco-city - a model for sustainability and peaceful coexistence. Her plans have gathered the support of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and she has formed an unlikely friendship.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
It was like having ghost neighbours”
Ceren Bogac Architect and psychologist
"It was just like living next-door to ghosts," says Ceren Bogac, 34, a Turkish Cypriot who grew up in a house overlooking Varosha. "The houses had flower pots, curtains, but no one was living there - it was a space which had been left suddenly." Her school was by the fence too, so if a ball got kicked over by mistake, it was gone forever.
Bogac's grandparents were refugees from Larnaca in the South and had been given a Greek Cypriot home in exchange for the property they had to abandon. Bogac grew up there, but when she was five or six years old she made a troubling discovery.
The only remaining photo of the Markides family home taken on Vasia's grandparents' wedding day
"One day I found, in a box, the personal belongings of other people, like photo albums and journals," says Bogac. "I asked my grandmother: 'Who does this belong to?' She said: 'It belongs to the real owners of this house.' And that was the first time I realised that we don't own the house that we are living in.
Continue reading the main story
In today's Magazine
Welcome to Varosha, the Mediterranean's best kept secret.
Miles of sand where it's just you and nature. Dozens of grand hotels where you'll have the pick of the rooms.
Just remember to pack your bolt cutters to make a hole in the fence - and watch out for the army patrols with orders to shoot on sight.
Before the division of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha - a resort in Famagusta - was booming. The rich and famous were drawn by some of the best beaches on the island. Richard Burton and Brigitte Bardot all dropped by - the Argo Hotel on JFK Avenue was said to be Elizabeth Taylor's favourite.
"Anyone who comes from Varosha has a romanticised notion of it," says Vasia Markides, 34, an American Greek-Cypriot whose mother grew up there. "They talk about it being the hub of art and intellectual activity. They describe it as the French Riviera of Cyprus."
But 40 years ago, after years of inter-ethnic violence culminating in a coup inspired by Greece's ruling military junta, Turkey invaded Cyprus and occupied the northern third of the island.
As its troops approached Varosha, a Greek-Cypriot community, the inhabitants fled, intending to return when the situation calmed down. However, the resort was fenced off by the Turkish military and has been a ghost town ever since. A UN resolution of 1984 calls for the handover of Varosha to UN control and prohibits any attempt to resettle it by anyone other than those who were forced out.
One of them was Markides' mother Emily - she had just got married and her wedding presents were still in the attic when they abandoned the family home. Others tell stories of pots left cooking on stoves, of lives stopped in mid-frame.
In 2003, travel restrictions were eased for the first time, allowing Cypriots on both sides to cross the UN Buffer Zone, commonly known as the "Green Line".
"The picture that I had in my mind was of a kind of paradise," Vasia Markides says of the day when she returned to peer across the wire at her ancestral home for the first time. "But it felt like some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare.
"You're seeing nature take over. Prickly pear bushes have overrun the entire six square kilometres. There are trees that have sprouted through living rooms. It's a ghost town."
Signs warn tourists peering across the fence that "photos and movies are forbidden." Trespassers risk death. Exiled residents regularly pin love-letters and flowers to the barbed wire.
Other than Turkish soldiers, few have ventured inside. Those that have describe extraordinary sights. A car dealership still stocked with 1974 cars, window displays of mannequins dressed in long-gone fashions, the sand dunes that have encroached over the seafront with rare sea turtles nesting in them.
Pictures of the devastation circulate online but the photographers won't always admit to taking them.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
1/9
Anything of value is likely to have been looted long ago and the infrastructure is now damaged beyond repair. But Markides has big plans for Varosha.
"From the moment I saw it, I felt driven to see this place revive," she says. "You could feel the energy, its potential, the energy that was once there."
Now living in New York, Markides is spearheading a proposal to turn Varosha into an eco-city - a model for sustainability and peaceful coexistence. Her plans have gathered the support of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and she has formed an unlikely friendship.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
It was like having ghost neighbours”
Ceren Bogac Architect and psychologist
"It was just like living next-door to ghosts," says Ceren Bogac, 34, a Turkish Cypriot who grew up in a house overlooking Varosha. "The houses had flower pots, curtains, but no one was living there - it was a space which had been left suddenly." Her school was by the fence too, so if a ball got kicked over by mistake, it was gone forever.
Bogac's grandparents were refugees from Larnaca in the South and had been given a Greek Cypriot home in exchange for the property they had to abandon. Bogac grew up there, but when she was five or six years old she made a troubling discovery.
"One day I found, in a box, the personal belongings of other people, like photo albums and journals," says Bogac. "I asked my grandmother: 'Who does this belong to?' She said: 'It belongs to the real owners of this house.' And that was the first time I realised that we don't own the house that we are living in.
