Description of the attraction
The Byzantine Museum, located in upper Paphos in the building of the Episcopal Palace next to the Church of St. Theodore, was created on the initiative of Bishop Chrysostomos. Initially, the Pilavakis house was set aside for the museum - it was there, in the period from 1983 to 1989, the main collection was exhibited. Later, the exposition was moved to the East wing of the palace, which the museum still occupies.
The main attention in the museum is paid to a huge collection of icons, of which there are more than a hundred on display. The museum also owns the most ancient "portable" icon of Cyprus - the icon of St. Marina, on which she is depicted in the form of Oranta, and scenes of her martyrdom are painted around the face of the saint. Although the exact date of the icon's creation is not known, scholars believe that it dates back to the 7th or 8th century, when Cyprus was under Arab oppression.
Most of the icons in the collection were painted in the traditional Byzantine style from the 12th to the 19th centuries, some of them are made in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance of the 15th-16th centuries. In later icons, you can see elements of the Baroque and Rococo.
In addition to icons, the museum also displays fragments of murals that have been found on the ruins and ruins of old churches and temples, such as the church of St. Theodore in Hulu and the church of the long-destroyed monastery of Chrysolacourna.
There you can also see wood and metal products, which, unfortunately, are presented in very small quantities, but they are striking in their beauty. For the most part, these are fragments of carved wooden iconostases, which were also once located in now no longer existing temples.
