The walls that still ring the old city of Nicosia were built by the Venetians in the 1560s in a last-ditch effort to fortify their most valuable Mediterranean possession against Ottoman expansion. They form a perfect circle 4.5 km in circumference, with eleven bastions — one for each of the noble Venetian families that funded a section — and three gates. The design was considered state-of-the-art military engineering for its era, with low, angled bastions intended to deflect cannon fire rather than simply receive it.
The walls today are best experienced on foot. A path follows the inner edge around much of the circuit, passing through residential neighbourhoods, parks, and past the wide dry moat (now partly a road and partly gardens). The Famagusta Gate on the eastern side is the most intact of the three original gates — a barrel-vaulted tunnel through the wall with a domed inner chamber, now used as a cultural centre. The best overall view of the walls' geometry is from the air (or a map), where the perfectly circular plan is still clearly visible in the modern street grid around it.