Museum sights in Lefkoşa (North Nicosia)
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Museum of Barbarism
While the Turkish Cypriots may have taken down the gruesome posters and photographs that used to greet arrivals at the Ledra Palace Hotel crossing, they have not forgotten the atrocities committed by Greek Cypriots and in particular EOKA thugs against the Turkish Cypriot community. The Museum of Barbarism is in a quiet suburb to the west of the Old City and takes a bit of seeking out.
On 24 December 1963, a mother and her children, along with a neighbour, were shot dead in their bath by EOKA gunmen. The bloodstained bath is retained as one of the exhibits in this rather macabre museum. There are other photo-documentary displays, particularly of Turkish Cypriots murdered i…
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Turkish Museum
The Turkish Museum is a former 17th-century tekke (monastery) of the mystic Islamic sect known as the Mevlevi Order, or more familiarly, the Whirling Dervishes. Their spiritual philosophy, started in the Turkish town Konya, is based on the mystical branch of Islam called Sufism. Among the displays of the Dervishes are interesting photographs of their dances in Nicosia in 1954.
The most fascinating part of the museum is the former kitchen of the tekke, the centre of the hierarchical order in which the Dervishes lived and moved from 'interns' to achieving Dervish status. Each new intern would have to prove himself worthy by taking on the role of a kitchen servant for severa…
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Dervish Pasha Museum
The small Dervish Pasha Museum is housed in a 19th-century mansion. Built in 1807, it belonged to a wealthy Turkish Cypriot, Derviş Paşa, who published Cyprus' first Turkish-language newspaper. The house was turned into an ethnographic museum in 1988. Household goods, including an old loom, glassware and ceramics, are displayed in former servants' quarters on the ground floor.
Upstairs is a rich display of embroidered Turkish costumes and, in the far corner, a sumptuous selamlık (a retiring room for the owner of the mansion and his guests), replete with sofas and nargileh (Middle Eastern water pipes), and even some guests, in the form of eerie mannequins dressed up in …
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Library of Sultan Mahmut II
The Library of Sultan Mahmut II is housed in an octagonal building erected in 1829. It contains some 1700 books, and the interior is decorated with a calligraphic frieze in blue and gold. Some of the books are up to 700 years old and the more valuable tomes are displayed in special cases. The books were on loan to the National Archive Library of Cyprus during the time of research.
The same ticket also gives you access to the Bedesten and the Lapidary Museum.
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Lapidary Museum
A visit to the Lapidary Museum is usually included in a visit to the Library of Sultan Mahmut II. This is a 15th-century building containing a varied collection of sarcophagi, shields, steles, columns, and a Gothic window rescued from a Lusignan palace that once stood near Atatürk Meydanı.
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