ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF KITION

This small 7,500^m2 site (Αρχαιολογικός Χώρος Κιτίου, Archeologikos Choros Kitiou) houses the remains of what was the center of the ancient city of Kition. The ancestor of the present Larnaka endured until the 4th century AD. The visit can be disappointing if one is not passionate about archaeology, because the site underwent important destructions (wars, earthquakes) and it is not very well organized (no shaded shelters, succinct information). But it delivered many objects today exposed in the museums of Larnaka, Nicosia, London or Paris. Kition was the main Cypriot city-state with Salamis (near Famagusta). It was founded in the 13th century B.C. by Achaeans (Greeks of the Mycenaean era) coming from the Peloponnese and remained for a long time under the control of the Phoenicians of Tyre (current Lebanon). It was conquered by the Egyptians in 570 B.C., by the Persians in 545 B.C., by the Athenians around 450 B.C., by the Lagids (Hellenistic dynasty of Egypt) in 312 B.C., before joining the Roman Empire in 58 B.C. The site was the subject of systematic excavations by Cypriot archaeologists between 1959 and 1981. One notes especially the presence of ruins of powerful defensive walls, known as cyclopean, set up in XIe century BC on the model that those of Mycènes. Also remain the foundations of a Phoenician temple of the IXth century B.C. which was dedicated to Astarte, Near Eastern divinity of the fertility prefiguring Aphrodite.