Writes the Mayor of Ayia Napa, G. Karousos
With a history that is over 1000 years old, the Medieval Monastery is a reference point of Ayia Napa. It is essentially the core of the city center, with unparalleled texture religiosity, uniqueness, and beauty. A point that even inspired our Nobel Prize-winning poet George Seferis and in 1973 it was a natural setting for the filming of Ghost by the noonday sun starring Peter Sellers.
Unfortunately, we did not take advantage of it and did not project it as it should and let an anarchic development surround it. It is enough to think what the center of Ayia Napa would be like if we gave the character of the monastery and the surrounding area to understand how different our center would be. We must redress these mistakes, as far as possible.
In recent decades, the North Side and center of Ayia Napa have declined. In recent years, in order to upgrade the center, we have implemented a series of small projects, renovations and landmarks, and with a assertive policy, we have achieved the designation of Ayia Napa as an urban center and secured funding for the upgrade of the center. At the same time, we prepared a strategic plan through which we selected the most important projects that we should implement. The first and most important is the restoration of our medieval monastery, which we matured and announced a few days ago.
Based on this design, in order to achieve the upgrade of our center, our medieval monastery will have to be upgraded, in a way that will function as the heart of the city center.
Its restoration, designed on the model of famous medieval monasteries in Europe such as Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Manadrin oriental in Prague, Parador de Granada (Spain) includes 6 thematic units with the most important being the creation of a museum where the majority of the exhibits will come from the private collection of Archbishop Makarios of G.
The next one in importance concerns the creation of an Institute of postgraduate studies in the subjects of Cypriot Hagiology and Middle Eastern cultures (this is the second university initiative in Ayia Napa), while a library, a research center and conference spaces will also be created.
The monastery of Ayia Napa is going to "breathe" again and in combination with the other 2 projects that will be announced in the coming months (renovation of Giannaki Pappoulli and Tefkrou Anthia streets) will be the basis for the revitalization of the center and the North side of Ayia Napa with social, cultural, educational and natural tourism benefits.