Lemesos (Limasol) History

History

Little is known about the early history of Lemesos; its neighbours, first Amathous and later Kourion, stole the limelight in the early days of civilisation in the area. In 1191, the crusader king Richard the Lionheart put Lemesos on the map when he arrived to rescue his sister and his fiancée, who had both been shipwrecked, and then mistreated by the ruler of Cyprus, Isaak Komninos. Richard defeated Komninos in battle and took Cyprus and Lemesos for himself. The city prospered for more than 200 years with a succession of Knights Hospitaller and Templar as its rulers until earthquakes, marauding Genoese (1373) and Saracens (1426) reduced Lemesos’ fortunes to virtually zero. The city was still creating a bad impression in the mid-20th century: Lawrence Durrell, writing in 1952 in Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, noted upon arrival in Lemesos that ‘…we berthed towards sunrise in a gloomy and featureless roadstead, before a town whose desolate silhouette suggested that of a tin-mining village in the Andes’.

Lemesos grew up quickly following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, as it was required to replace Famagusta (Mağusa) as the nation’s main port. It was also obliged to shoulder the mantle of the tourist boom in the Republic. Originally comprising what is today known as the Old City, radiating out from the Old Fishing Harbour, Lemesos has outgrown its original geographic limits to now encompass a sprawling tourist suburb. The tourist centre is a riotous confusion of bars and restaurants, and you could be excused for forgetting that the sea is there at all.