Kykkos Monastery

Kykkos Monastery tickets: which one to buy

The monastery itself is free to enter; the museum beside it charges a modest ticket and is the one part worth paying for, since it holds the best collection of Byzantine icons and church silver on the island. Kykkos sits at 1,318 metres in the Troodos mountains, about an hour and a half from Paphos or Limassol on winding roads, and there is no public transport that makes a day trip work.

Organised tours from the coastal resorts are the normal way in and cost a moderate amount, usually combining the monastery with the village of Omodos, a winery and sometimes the tomb of Archbishop Makarios on the ridge above. Jeep safaris cover the same ground on forest tracks for more money and more fun. A hire car is straightforward, and the drive through the pine forests is half the point. There is a cafeteria at the monastery and a couple of tavernas in the villages nearby.

Visiting Kykkos Monastery: what to see

The monastery was founded around 1100 under the emperor Alexios I Komnenos, and its treasure is an icon of the Virgin said to have been painted by St Luke, which has been kept covered in silver gilt for centuries; nobody living has seen the image beneath, and tradition holds that those who look go blind. Fire destroyed the buildings repeatedly, so what stands is largely nineteenth and twentieth century, and the courtyards are covered in modern mosaic and fresco of a brightness that startles visitors expecting medieval gloom.

The scale is the thing: covered walkways, gilded iconostasis, and a wealth accumulated from land and pilgrims that made Kykkos the richest house in Cyprus. Archbishop Makarios III, the island's first president, began as a novice here in 1926 and is buried three kilometres away at Throni, where a hilltop shrine looks over the whole Troodos range. The museum's icons, some from the twelfth century, are displayed in dim rooms with good captions.

Kykkos Monastery opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily, from morning to early evening in summer and with shorter afternoon hours from November to May; the museum keeps slightly tighter hours than the monastery. Tour buses arrive between eleven and two. Altitude makes the difference here: in August the coast may be 38 degrees while Kykkos is a pleasant 28, and in winter snow closes the roads for days at a time. Spring brings wildflowers along the whole drive.

Dress code is enforced at the gate, with shoulders and knees covered and wraps lent to those who arrive unprepared. Photography is forbidden inside the church and allowed in the courtyards. Allow an hour for monastery and museum, half a day for the round trip from the coast, and add the drive up to Throni for the view, which is ten minutes further and almost always empty. The road over the Troodos ridge is slow and worth an extra hour for the villages of Pedoulas and Kakopetria on the way down.