ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF LIMASSOL

This national museum (Επαρχιακό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Λεμεσού/Eparchiako Archaiologiko Mousio Lemesou) brings together many of the archaeological finds made in the Limassol district and the British territory of Akrotiri. Founded in 1948, it has been housed in an austere Brutalist-style building since 1985. While the presentation is also austere, the collections are rich. There are 500 items covering a wide period up to the Roman Empire, many of them from the Amathonte archaeological site. The exhibition is divided into three rooms. The first houses Bronze Age pottery, terracotta from different periods and the fossilized bones of a pygmy elephant and a pygmy hippopotamus, two endemic species that became extinct around 7,000 BC, shortly after the arrival of man in Cyprus. The second room also contains rare pieces: gold jewelry, vases, Mycenaean crockery, statues, objects linked to the cult of Aphrodite and representations of Egyptian divinities, including an impressive statue of Bes, the god of the hearth. The third room features large sculptures, tombstones, capitals, inscriptions and other sculpted objects in marble and limestone. The artefacts found on the site of ancient Kourion are on display at the Kourion Archaeological Museum in the village of Episkopi (on the road to Paphos).