Nicosia

Nicosia is the capital of Cyprus, set in the Mesaoria plain on the Pedieos River in the middle of the island. Greek speakers call it Lefkosia and Turkish speakers Lefkoşa, and the old town keeps buildings from Gothic, Venetian and Ottoman times.

A settlement called Ledra stood on the site in ancient times. Nicosia became the capital of the island under Byzantine rule around the 10th century, and the Lusignan kings made it their royal seat from the late 12th century. Venice ringed the city in the 1560s with stone walls and arrow-shaped bastions, a circle that still marks the edge of the old town. The Ottomans held it from the late 16th century and Britain from 1878, and it became the capital of the independent Republic of Cyprus in 1960.

The Selimiye Mosque was built in the 13th century as the Gothic Cathedral of Saint Sophia, where the Lusignan kings were crowned, and received its minarets under Ottoman rule. Büyük Han, an Ottoman inn for travelling merchants around a courtyard, holds craft shops and cafés. The Cyprus Museum keeps finds from across the island, among them the hundreds of terracotta votive figures from the sanctuary of Ayia Irini. Ledra Street, the main shopping street of the walled city, runs north from Eleftheria Square toward the old Venetian gate.

Wargaming, the maker of the online game World of Tanks, has its headquarters in Nicosia. The University of Cyprus took its first students in the late 1980s and later moved to a new campus at Aglantzia on the eastern edge of the city. Halloumi, the brined sheep and goat cheese of Cyprus, comes to the city's markets from dairies in the villages of the plain.