Abandoned Villages - Melandra

[Dominic]

We first stumbled upon Melandra last Autumn. We were trying to find an interesting route from Pano Panagia to Polis, and having visited a number of isolated villages, decided to venture off-road. The countryside at the time was very brown and arid. So when we revisited the village this May, we hardly recognised the place.

Read the article and chat about it below...

[PW in Polemi]

Uuum, it doesn't come up. I get an "Admin log in page" ....

and yes, I logged in myself then tried again.

[cyprusmax47]

Go to the Home page, there it works...
Max

[PW in Polemi]

Thanks, Max. Should have thought of that myself

[Dominic]

Sorry about that. First of all, thank you to Max for providing a quick solution, and thanks to Memory Man for alerting me to the problem. The link is fixed now as well.

[Kili01]

You can find many abandoned villages, usually were Turkish Cypriot, or sometimes villages where both GC and TC had lived together for hundreds of years before 'the troubles' of the 50's and 60's. Some of them are in fairly remote but beautiful valleys only connected by tracks or the old 'white roads'. The dilapidated buildings, once peoples houses show clues of the violent way armed gangs may have raided,killed the occupants or maybe they fled, the buildings may have been fired or they blew them up.
All so,sad.
Dee

Dee

[Dominic]

What I find surprising is that the churches are often still maintained. They must have very busy priests in the remoter parts of Cyprus.

[memory man]

Are those abandoned villages haunted? Like I have heard a few stories

Tell us more.

What stories have you "heard"?

[Dominic]

Snakes are the scariest thing I have found while out exploring. Actually that's not strictly true. There is a remote church near Melandra that has it's own crypt, and in the church itself are a load of wax babies. That was pretty spooky, especially as it was quite dark.

ooooeeeeooooo

spooky.jpg (156.96 KiB) Viewed 7477 times

[Kili01]

I am told that these remote, but restored churches usually belong to a relatively nearby village where some of its former inhabitants or their descendants still want to come back to use their old church especially on its saints day. It seems as if all churches in Cyprus are named after saints all of whom have an annual saints day!
Others of these old churches are known as 'healing churches' where those with a health problem can come to pray to the saint for a cure. They are usually founded on a place where a so called 'healing miracle was performed in the past and the memory/myth is still believed in the villages. You sometimes see a waxen arm or leg left hanging inside the church in a dusty corner as a symbol.Others are associated with curing infertility problems,I understand, which is why a wax doll symbolising a baby is left behind at the church as a symbol of hope to a childless woman. The people to leave these offerings come to pray to the saint.

It is so interesting walking around these deserted villages, sometimes the village Mosque stands next to the village church and one or other is still quite well maintained.
So poignant, thinking about how once these villages were thriving little communities.
Dee

[Dominic]

Apparently there are over 100 churches on the Akamas, though presumably that must include it's surrounding villages too. I was told some of them got built by grateful believers who had recovered from an illness or in some other way benefited from their faith.

Polemi itself has four churches, I think.

[cyprusmax47]

Little Letymbou with ca 300 inhabitants has 8 churches!! But Letymbou is well known in the region for that. The population in the past must have been much greater than now (in medieval times)...
Max

[Dominic]

Or perhaps it is just an extreme example of "Keeping Up With The Jones's"?

One family builds a church to say thanks. Another family decide to build a slightly bigger church. The first family doesn't want to be outdone, so they build a BIGGER church. etc etc

[PaphosAL]

What a lovely and thought-provoking post you made there, Dee...

Thanks! AL

[Dominic]

Aw, that's nice. Hope they prove effective.

Of course, there are baby dolls heads on spikes in Paphos Forest. I think they are used as scarecrows though, rather than a fertility rite.

[Dominic]

This page shows you the locations of most of the blogs.

https://www.paphoslife.com/directory/category/plblog

Over time, it will obviously get bigger!