Cyprus - Kourion

Continuing on from yesterday's post, it was a short drive from the Stadium to the Kourion archaeological site, which sits on a hill beside the sea, not far from the city of Lemesos. The ticket office is on the road at the bottom of the hill, where you pull over, park, walk up to the office, then back to the car and the guard opens the gate. What a cumbersome process and it must be a real bottleneck in the summer. Other than that it is a very well organized site - there's a visitors centre with a model, small book/gift store, washrooms, vending machines. smooth paths (wheel chair accessible), covered mosaics, braille signage and shaded benches to look at the views. There was a tour bus in the parking lot but it's a big enough site that I saw very few other people.

As I started to explore, it started to drizzle so I was pleased that the first complex was covered.

Hard to tell from this photo but the villa would have had a commanding view from the hilltop, across a lush bit of coastal plain to the sea.

The rain was getting on to some of the mosaics

making them brighter and clearer.

Still raining, I slipped the hood up on my raincoat and made my way from  the covered villa (that wooden roof on the left of the photo) to the theatre close by.

It has been completed restored and is used for community concerts and events. It would be fabulous to see something here, with the Mediterranean as a backdrop. You would need to bring a cushion to sit on. I assume the Romans did too.

It was a short walk to the next monument and I noticed that Cyclamen  were growing wild all over the hill.

This was labeled "The Earthquake House". Cyprus became Roman in 50BC. This house is dated at late first or second century AD but was destroyed by the 4th Century earthquake that destroyed so much of the islands buildings. The excavations revealed every day life in Kourion at that time and the finds are housed in a museum in Episkopi, nearby. That's for another day.

From here I could look down on Kourion Beach and along the coast towards Pissouri.

I have been told that as winter moves into spring

I will see more and more colour. This nasty looking bush is in bud and looks like it will be a mass of yellow flowers soon.

This one is already covered in pale purple blossoms.

At the highest point on the hill

there was a lookout and you could see

all of this huge site from up there.

Next up; the Early Christian Basilica, built in the beginning of the 5th Century AD. This was a huge Cathedral, in the Roman style with mosaic floors

and extensive use of marble for statues, floors,

walls and other architectural elements.

From here an even better view of the beach

and the cliffs.

Next I moved on to the House of the Gladiators

named due to the subjects of the mosaics there.

Further down the path, the House of Achilles. I had seen this from the road as I approached the site.

Back up the path to a huge excavated area, starting with the public baths.

Though many contemporary cultures see bathing as a very private activity conducted in the home, bathing in Rome was a communal activity. While the extremely wealthy could afford bathing facilities in their homes, most people bathed in the communal baths thermae. In some ways, these resembled modern-day spas. The Romans raised bathing to high art as they socialized in these communal baths.
(from Wikipedia)
They had steam baths, hot baths, warm, cool and cold baths as well as rooms for massage and relaxation.
A key invention in the history of baths was the hypocaust which was invented at the end of the 2nd century BC. Though evidence of the floor heating systems exists in earlier models, it seems that the Romans really developed and perfected this technology. The invention of the hypocaust caused bathing to take off as a cultural phenomenon. The hypocaust is a furnace, and the hot gasses from the hypocaust were allowed to circulate in a 2 foot space beneath the floors of the baths. The floor was usually supported by pillars of bricks, terracotta or stone, with 0.6 meter square tiles resting on top. Chimneys and pipes circulated the hot air through the space under the floor so that the fire from the furnace never touched the floor of the baths. Later on, Romans began to make the walls of the baths hollow allowing the hot gasses to circulate within the walls, after heating the floor, heating them to about body temperature (from Wikipedia)

This was, by far, the largest bathing complex I had seen yet.

The entrance to the baths was at the end of the Agora, the public market place. Here there would have been shops and stalls down each side of the open, paved area.

Of the 16 marble columns found in this area, 6 were found in situ.

This was a huge cistern with pipes to it and settling ponds. It was lined with a waterproof plaster. They would have needed a lot of water for the population and those baths. Though I did find an article about criticisms of the baths from local Romans, that the water wasn't changed often enough and that you shouldn't bath if you had an open wound as it would get infected.

By now I was ravenous and went down to the only restaurant open on the beach. I had a "Cypriot Breakfast" - bacon, fried eggs, a spicy sausage, grilled haloumi and a salad. Food was good but the service was terribly slow.

From my seat inside I could watch a group of fisherman pulling in fish after fish in the pouring rain.

By the time I finished eating the rain had stopped and it was getting brighter.

My drive home was through periods of sun interspersed with torrential rain.