Panagia Angeloktisti

The name means built by angels, and the church at Kiti is an eleventh-century building raised over the ruins of a fifth-century basilica whose apse was kept. In that apse is a mosaic of the Virgin standing with the Christ child between two archangels, made in the sixth century and one of a very small number of figural mosaics anywhere to survive the iconoclast destruction of the eighth and ninth centuries. The gold ground and the faces are largely original.

History

The first building here was a wooden-roofed basilica, probably of the 5th century, with an apse mosaic of the 6th. Like many Cypriot basilicas it was wrecked in the 7th or 8th century, by Arab raids or by fire, but the apse with its mosaic survived and was built into the later church; an agreement of 688-9 between the caliph Abd al-Malik and Justinian II made Cyprus neutral ground, which is why the island was largely spared the iconoclast destruction of 730-843. The present domed cross-in-square church was built between the mid-11th and the early 12th century, after Byzantine rule was restored in 965, on the foundations of the basilica, which gave it an elongated plan. A small excavation in 1959 found graves in the earlier foundations and showed that the church had been preceded by a columned basilica and then a pier basilica of the 6th or 7th century. In September 2015 the church was submitted to UNESCO, and it stands on its tentative list (Wikipedia, Panagia tis Angeloktistis).

What you'll find

• The apse mosaic - a sixth-century Virgin between archangels, on gold ground.
• The surviving apse - the fifth-century basilica wall kept in the later church.
• The iconostasis - a carved screen in the main body of the church.
• The Latin chapel - a Gothic side chapel added in the fourteenth century.

When to go

Year round. The church closes for a long midday break and the mosaic is best seen in morning light. Sunday services fill the building.

Before you go

The mosaic is behind the altar screen and viewing is at a distance. Photography is restricted and often forbidden entirely. The village around has nothing else for visitors.

Nearby

Larnaca is eleven kilometres northeast, and the salt lake is between them.

Key facts