On Louki Akrita Street named after L. Akrit (1909–1965), a writer, journalist and member of the Greek Parliament, born in Cyprus and never losing touch with the island, several Art Deco pearls survive.
You might still have time to enjoythem!
The first building that greets us on the right, in the embrace of the garden, is a large two-story house with a small turret made for Kleopa Panao in the 1950s.
According to the documents found by Yirgos Demetriou while working on this guidebook, the design of the house belongs to the Michaelides brothers architectural bureau, leading on the island in the 1930s and 1940s.
It represents rather a return to theArt Deco aesthetics of the 1920s and 1930s.
Next are the ruins of another mansion with elegant decor of the 1920s and 1930s. The niches on the side of the entrance seem to suggest that these could be ticket offices and the building itself could be a theater, but it was a residence most probably too.
Finally, completing the right side of the street, there is a shabby residential house with a columned porch in Tuscan style, which belongs to the church.
Dr. Iosif Hadjikyriakos told me that birds live in it, it’s a bird house!
At the intersection with Markou Drakou Street, named after a fighter for the independence, which lost several houses this fall, an interesting mansion keeps safe with a portico in the spirit of early Art Nouveau. The fence and the doors have a sunrise pattern, harmonizing with the blue color of the ceiling.
There was a clinic in the house, it belonged to an Armenian family who owned several other houses on the street, two of which were demolished in the fall of 2023.
The style is similar in the one-story mansion next door.
Let’s now turn onto Konstantinou Zahariadi street. We pass by a stone mansion with a two-story terrace with rotundas (on the left — WJ9H+FVW Larnaca, Cyprus).
A masterful drawing and a gorgeous volume refer us to the work of Benjamin Ginzburg, an outstanding master of the Cypriot Art Deco era, about whom we will talk in more detail today.
Originally it was a one-family mansion, now there are apartments for the less fortunated, which gives hope for its preservation.
Another couple of minutes — and we will find ourselves at the intersection with Grigoris Afksentiou street: we turn right and, passing the hospital built on the cusp of centuries, go to the main building of this part of town.
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