Travel Guide Morfou – Güzelyurt

Don't be fooled by its name: Morphou means "the beautiful" and Güzelyurt, "beautiful city". With the exception of a few colonial villas and the municipal market, inherited from the British period, there's not much in the way of beauty here. Nevertheless, the town is well worth a visit. For its citrus-rich surroundings (50% of the northern zone's production), for the welcome of its inhabitants, not yet jaded by tourists, and for its two interesting places to visit, the Agios Mamas monastery and the Museum of Archaeology and Natural History. The Spartans who founded the town in the 8th century B.C. appear to have introduced the cult of Aphrodite to Cyprus. Constantly populated by Greek speakers for millennia, the city never counted more than 200 Turkish speakers after the Ottoman conquest. That all changed with the invasion of 1974: the departure of 7,500 Greek Cypriots and the massive arrival of Turkish Cypriots driven out of the southern zone, particularly Paphos.