Apostolos Andreas Monastery - Karpaz

This is one of the pilgrimage centres of Orhodox Church of Cyprus, and is at the tip of the Karpas peninsula.

It was once the Lourdes of Cyprus, served not by an organized community of monks but by a changing group of volunteer priests and laymen.

An enormous modern plaza of pilgrims lodgings frames the slightly older monastery buildings wrapped around the church. Below, the modern church steps lead down to a square, vaulted chapel, three baptismal basins fed by a sacred spring and an old wharf.

It was on this site that St Andrew briefly landed in Cyprus on his final missionary journey back to his Palestinian homeland. His footfall revealed a spring whose waters miraculously healed the blind captain of his ship.

A fortified monastery stood here in the 12th century, from which Isaac Comnenus negotiated his surrender to Richard the Lion Heart, though the chapel built in the 15th century is the oldest surviving building.