Paphos was Cyprus's Roman capital and the island's religious heart for a thousand years. Three days trace it from 4th-century BCE royal tombs through Roman mosaic floors and Byzantine monasteries to the Ottoman-era old town and the scars of 1974.
The 'Forty Columns' fortress, built by the Lusignans around 1200 CE on Byzantine foundations and destroyed by the 1222 earthquake. Granite columns from Roman buildings lie where they fell; the moat, keep and eight towers are all traceable on foot.
A 12th-century church standing inside the ruins of a vast 4th-century Christian basilica, with mosaic floor panels still exposed in the open air. The adjacent column is where tradition says St Paul was flogged in 45 CE before converting the Roman governor.
Ruins of a three-aisled 5th-century basilica destroyed in the 7th-century Arab raids and rebuilt in the 12th. Low walls, column bases and geometric floor mosaics sit in a fenced plot between the harbour hotels, with interpretation boards in Greek and English.
A semicircular limestone odeon of the 2nd century CE, restored to twelve seating rows, facing the paved Roman agora and the remains of the asklepieion healing sanctuary. Late light rakes across the seats and the acoustics still carry a spoken voice.
Around 100 icons from the 7th to the 19th century, including the island's oldest surviving icon (Agia Marina, 7th–8th century), plus carved iconostases and manuscripts rescued from village churches. Housed in the Bishop's Palace on Andrea Ioannou.
A private collection assembled by the Eliades family in their 19th-century mansion: looms, wedding chests, oil presses, folk costumes and coin hoards, with a Hellenistic rock-cut tomb sitting in the back garden beneath the terrace.
Five galleries running chronologically from Neolithic Lemba through Bronze Age Kouklia to Roman Paphos: marble Aphrodite statuary, clay hot-water bottles shaped for limbs from the Nea Paphos hospital, and grave goods from the Tombs of the Kings.
The domed 16th-century hammam behind the covered market, and the streets above it: Mouttalos was the Turkish Cypriot quarter until 1974, then housed Greek Cypriot refugees from Morphou. Minaret and mosque still stand over the mixed neighbourhood.
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The cult centre founded around 1200 BCE, where a conical black stone was worshipped as the goddess for 1,500 years and pilgrims arrived from across the Roman world. The Lusignan manor house above holds the site museum and the stone itself.
Excavated Chalcolithic settlement of around 3500 BCE, where Edinburgh archaeologists rebuilt five circular mudbrick huts using period tools and materials to test how they were roofed and how long they stood. The site sits beside Lemba's art college.
The hermitage a 12th-century monk carved into the cliff himself, with frescoes he commissioned in 1183 covering the rock-cut chapel walls — including a Crucifixion where Neophytos had himself painted between two archangels. Museum and monastery below.
The upper town's Ottoman commercial core: the 1885 covered market on Agoras Street, the restored caravanserai courtyard of Ibrahim's Khan now holding craft workshops, and the surviving colonial-era shopfronts along Makariou.