Paphos Archaeological Park: Roman Mosaics and Civic Life in Cyprus

Paphos Archaeological Park, by the harbour of Kato Paphos on the west coast of Cyprus, covers most of the ancient city of Nea Paphos, the capital of Cyprus under the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt and then under Rome. Its fame rests on the mosaic floors of its great Roman houses, among the finest in the Mediterranean, but it also holds a theatre, an odeon, an agora and the remains of the city walls, while a short distance to the north lies the necropolis known as the Tombs of the Kings. Together they make it possible to read the life of a provincial capital, from the grand houses of its elite to its public spaces and its cemeteries. On our Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus tour we spend Day 15 at Nea Paphos.

Nea Paphos as a Roman civic landscape

Nea Paphos, “New Paphos”, was founded in the late fourth century BC, most likely by Nikokles, the last king of the old city-kingdom of Paphos, whose ancient centre and famous sanctuary of Aphrodite lay some kilometres to the south-east at what is now Kouklia. The new city was built on the coast, around a harbour, at a time when Cyprus was being drawn into the world of Alexander the Great’s successors.

Under the Ptolemies, the Macedonian dynasty that ruled Egypt, Nea Paphos replaced Salamis in the second century BC as the administrative capital of Cyprus, and it kept that role when the island passed to Rome. It became a substantial walled city, enclosed by defences that took in an area of almost a square kilometre, with a harbour, an agora, theatres and the houses of the island’s governing class. Its prosperity ended in the fourth century AD, when a series of destructive earthquakes struck the island and the capital moved back to Salamis, in the east. Nea Paphos survived as a Christian bishopric into the Byzantine period, but on a smaller scale.

Today the site is part of the Paphos UNESCO World Heritage listing, inscribed in 1980, which also includes the Tombs of the Kings and the old sanctuary at Kouklia. Excavation has been carried out by the Cypriot Department of Antiquities and by foreign teams, notably a Polish mission working since 1965 and an Australian team from the University of Sydney excavating the theatre since 1995.

Villa mosaics as evidence for household culture

The mosaics are found in the houses of the wealthy, and they are the main reason for the site’s reputation. Four houses are especially important, each named after a figure in its mosaics.

The House of Dionysos is the best known. Built in the Roman period, in the second or early third century AD, and destroyed by the earthquakes of the fourth century, it covered about 2,000 square metres, with more than 40 rooms, and some 556 square metres of its floors are decorated with mosaics. They show scenes from Greek myth: the triumph of Dionysos, the god of wine; Ikarios, who in legend received the gift of wine from Dionysos; the tragic lovers Pyramus and Thisbe; Narcissus gazing at his reflection; Apollo and Daphne; Phaedra and Hippolytos; and Zeus carrying off Ganymede. Beneath the Roman house, a much earlier pebble mosaic of the sea monster Scylla, dating to the late fourth or early third century BC, is the oldest mosaic floor found in Cyprus.

The House of Aion, close by, has a single great mosaic from the early fourth century AD, arranged in panels around the figure of Aion, the personification of eternal time, with scenes including a beauty contest between Cassiopeia and the sea nymphs and the punishment of Marsyas. The Villa of Theseus is the largest building on the site, about 120 by 80 metres with more than a hundred rooms around a colonnaded courtyard, and was probably the residence of the Roman governor. Its mosaics include Theseus fighting the Minotaur and, from a later period, the first bath of the infant Achilles. A fourth house, the House of Orpheus, has mosaics including Orpheus charming the animals with his music, though it is not always open to visitors.

What do the mosaics tell us about life in Nea Paphos?

They show what the island’s elite wanted their guests to see. These were floors for reception rooms and dining rooms, places where the owners entertained. Choosing stories from Greek myth, many of them about wine, love, divine power and heroic struggle, displayed the owners’ education and their place in the shared culture of the Greek-speaking Roman world. The quality of the work suggests skilled workshops, and the range of subjects, from mythological scenes to personifications such as Aion, shows how ideas, religion and taste travelled across the Mediterranean. The mosaics also date the houses: they help archaeologists trace how the city was built, rebuilt and finally ruined by earthquakes.

Theatre, Odeon and public architecture

Beyond the houses, Paphos Archaeological Park preserves the public face of the city. The theatre is one of the earliest structures in Nea Paphos, dating to the end of the fourth century BC, and was used and rebuilt for several centuries. The agora, the public square, lay near the harbour beneath the hill of the city’s acropolis, a large open space of about 150 by 160 metres surrounded by colonnades, laid out formally in the second century BC. Beside it stands the odeon, a small, semicircular theatre of limestone, built in the second century AD, which has been restored and is still used for performances. Nearby, a building identified as an Asklepieion, a sanctuary of the healing god Asklepios, completes the picture of a city with places for politics, trade, entertainment and religion.

These public buildings tell a different story from the mosaics. The houses show the private world of a few wealthy families; the agora, odeon and theatre show the shared civic life of the wider population, the meetings, markets and performances that made Nea Paphos a capital.

The Tombs of the Kings

About two kilometres north of the harbour lies the necropolis known as the Tombs of the Kings. Despite the name, no kings were buried here. The rock-cut underground tombs, many dating from the fourth century BC and in use until the third century AD, were made for the aristocrats and high officials of Nea Paphos. The name comes from their grandeur. Some of the tombs are cut into the rock around open courtyards ringed by Doric columns, and some imitate the houses of the living, with rooms opening off a central court. Walking down into them, you see how the city’s elite thought about death as well as life, and how closely the tombs followed the architecture of the houses above ground.

Christian and Byzantine Paphos

The later history of the city is visible at the site too. According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Barnabas came to Paphos on their first missionary journey, and there the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus heard their teaching and came to believe. Just outside the park, in Kato Paphos, the ruins of the large early Christian basilica of Chrysopolitissa lie beside a later church, and a stone column there is pointed out by local tradition as the pillar where Paul was flogged, a story with no ancient evidence behind it but a long life in the town.

Inside the park, on a low rise near the harbour, are the remains of Saranta Kolones, “Forty Columns”, named after the many granite columns lying among its ruins, which were reused from older buildings. It was a Byzantine fortress, probably built to guard the harbour in the period of Arab raids, and rebuilt as a castle after the Lusignans, French crusader kings, took Cyprus at the end of the twelfth century. An earthquake in 1222 destroyed it soon after. The building stone of a Roman capital became the defences of a much smaller medieval town, which is the story of Nea Paphos told in miniature.

How long should you allow for a visit?

Allow around two to three hours for the main park, and roughly an hour more for the Tombs of the Kings. The four mosaic houses alone deserve an unhurried hour, since the floors reward close looking, and the walk out to the odeon, agora and Saranta Kolones adds more. On the tour, a guide sets the pace and points out the details that are easy to pass by.

How much walking does Paphos Archaeological Park involve?

A fair amount, but mostly on fairly level ground. The site is large and spread out across the flat coastal land by the harbour, and walking between the houses, the odeon and the agora takes time. The main mosaics in the House of Dionysos are under a protective roof, but much of the rest of the site is open to the sun, so a hat and water are worth having. The Tombs of the Kings involve steps down into the rock-cut courtyards. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2, Moderate: three to five hours of activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground.

Paphos within the Cyprus journey

Nea Paphos is the first major site of the tour’s week on Cyprus. The day continues with lunch at Kourion and a visit to its archaeological site, with remains from the Hellenistic, Roman and early Christian periods. The next day we leave the coast for the Troodos Mountains and their Byzantine churches, described in our guide to the painted churches of the Troodos, and later in the week we visit the ancient city that took back the role of capital after the earthquakes, Salamis, on the east coast.

The tour reaches Cyprus from Rhodes, where the last great site was the acropolis of Lindos. For a broader introduction to the island and its place in the region, see our overview of the Greek islands and Cyprus and our collection of articles on Cyprus, and for how the whole journey connects, our Eastern Mediterranean islands itinerary.

Paphos Archaeological Park is one of those rare sites where the decoration of private houses survives on such a scale that you can almost hear the conversation in their dining rooms. To see it with a guide, alongside the theatre, the odeon and the Tombs of the Kings, in a small group of 6 to 14 travellers, explore the Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus small group tour.