Painted Churches in the Troodos Region

Step inside, and let your eyes adjust. Outside, the mountain air smells of pine resin and warm earth. In here, it is cool and dim, and it smells faintly of old wax and stone. For a moment you see almost nothing. Then the walls begin to fill with faces. Saints, angels, kings and fishermen. Deep reds, ochres, and a blue that seems to glow. Every surface around you is painted, from the floor almost to the peak of the roof.

You are standing in one of the Painted Churches of the Troodos Region. This is not a single building. It is a group of ten churches and monasteries scattered across the Troodos mountains, the great green spine of central Cyprus. UNESCO added them to its World Heritage List in 1985, and expanded the listing in 2001. Most of these churches sit on the northern slopes, inside Nicosia District. They are spread across small villages, linked by winding mountain roads.

Here is the first surprise, and you may have noticed it as you walked up. From outside, many of these churches do not look like churches at all. They look like barns. They have steep, pitched timber roofs covered with flat clay tiles, and plain stone walls. Many visitors drive straight past them. There is nothing on the outside to suggest the colour inside.

That roof has a purpose. Winters in the Troodos are wet, and snow falls on the higher villages. In several churches, builders raised this wooden roof over an older structure, sometimes over a small stone dome. The second roof works like an umbrella. It keeps rain and snow away from the masonry, and so it protects the paintings inside. One church near Kakopetria even takes its name from it. It is called Saint Nicholas of the Roof.

Why are there so many painted churches up here, so far from the coast? For centuries, Cyprus belonged to the Byzantine world. The Byzantine Empire was the eastern, Greek-speaking continuation of the Roman Empire, centred on Constantinople. The mountains offered shelter, timber and water. Monks founded monasteries in the valleys, and villagers built small churches of their own. Wealthy local patrons paid painters to decorate them, and often had their own portraits added to the walls.

Now look around you again. The paintings are not random decoration. They follow a careful plan. In most Byzantine churches, Christ appears high above, often as the Pantokrator, a Greek word meaning ruler of all. Below come scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Lower still stand rows of saints, at the height of a human being. For worshippers who could not read, these walls worked like an open book. They told the whole story of the faith in pictures.

The oldest of these paintings go back about nine hundred years. At the church of Panagia Phorbiotissa, known simply as Asinou, near the village of Nikitari, a painted inscription dates the earliest work to the very start of the twelfth century. Panagia is the Greek name for the Virgin Mary, meaning all-holy. Asinou stands alone among trees, away from any village. Many people who know these churches consider it one of the finest.

A short drive away, in Lagoudera, stands the church of Panagia tou Araka. Its paintings date from the late twelfth century. They belong to what art historians call the Komnenian style, named after the Komnenos dynasty that ruled Byzantium at that time. Look for long, slender figures and faces full of feeling. The fabric of the robes falls in sharp, almost restless folds. These painters wanted the viewer to feel grief and tenderness, not only to learn a lesson.

The story does not stop with Byzantium. Later, Cyprus came under western rule, first a French crusader dynasty called the Lusignans, and then Venice. Western ideas reached even these mountain villages. In some later churches you can see a mix of Byzantine and Italian painting. Faces become rounder. Landscapes gain depth. At the church of Stavros tou Agiasmati, near Platanistasa, the paintings are attributed to a local master named Philippos Goul, working in the late fifteenth century.

Here is the second surprise. For centuries, many of these walls looked much darker than they do today. Smoke from candles and oil lamps settled on the paint, year after year. Conservation teams have worked carefully on several of the churches, cleaning away that layer. Their work shows how bright the original colours were. Remoteness also helped. Because these churches stood far from the main centres of power, many escaped the destruction that struck buildings in the cities.

These are not museums. Most of them are still working churches. Local people come to light a candle, to marry, and to bury their dead. In some villages, a caretaker or a priest holds the key and opens the door for visitors. Speak quietly. You may see fresh flowers in front of an icon, or a woman crossing herself as she walks in. That human thread connects the painted saints to the village outside.

The journey between the churches is part of the experience. The roads climb through pine forest and drop into valleys of orchards and terraced vineyards. Stone villages cling to the slopes, with red tile roofs and narrow lanes. You cannot see all ten churches comfortably in one day. Many travellers choose two or three that sit close together, and spend the rest of the time walking, eating and simply looking.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment. Look up at the timber beams above you, dark with age. Then look at one single face on the wall, any face. Someone painted it by hand, by lamplight, many centuries ago. Villagers have stood exactly where you are standing ever since. When you step back outside, the light will feel very bright. Listen for the wind in the pines, a dog barking in the village, perhaps a church bell. Turn around and look at that plain tiled roof once more. Now you know what it holds. And as you drive on to the next village, watch for other modest roofs among the trees... each one might shelter a world of colour.