At the edge of a village 11 kilometers from Limassol stands the medieval Kolossi Castle.

Most of our study in Cyprus revolves around the Hellenistic and earlier; the Vigla site, after all, is Hellenistic, and our emphasis throughout the course in Cyprus has been on antiquity. We’re looking for the footprints of Alexander’s successors, after all, and Cyprus was a militarily and economically strategic island. So it makes sense that a castle built over a thousand years after the Antigonid and Ptolemaic dynastic struggles would be an outlier in our tours of Paphos, Kurion, and Kition.

As a budding medievalist, however, I was stoked. Familiar names like Issac Komnenos, Richard I, and Guy de Luisignan, Joan of England and Berengaria of Navarre– these were figures whose stories feature across my studies of the medieval Mediterranean. Groups like the Hospitallers and Templars, though not my favorite religious armed gangs, I was at least acquainted with.

Cyprus has always been an important and contested place. Like Sicily, another borderland island, Cyprus saw the flux of imperial influence and conquest. Many of the players are the same: Richard had just finished rescuing his sister Joan from Sicily when many of the ships in his fleet crashed on Cyprus. Isaac Komnenos took many of the survivors captive, so Richard waged war on Isaac and eventually captured and plundered the island.

After Richard sold Cyprus to the Templars and they returned it to him, Richard then sold the island to Guy de Luisignan, the failing King of Jerusalem. Cyprus thus became one of the Crusader States with a Frankish Roman Catholic ruling minority.

Kolossi Castle was built in 1210 by the Knights Hospitaller as a military fortification, and it’s clear from its no-nonsense appearance that Kolossi was meant for war, not pleasure. It’s a relatively plain looking keep, three stories, square, with an excellent view of the surrounding area.

Our visit to Kolossi was a great introduction to the role of Cyprus in the Middle Ages, paralleling the way that Cyprus was a strategic and contested place in antiquity.

–Miki H.