Büyük Han

Beautifully restored 16th-century Ottoman caravanserai

The finest surviving Ottoman building on Cyprus. The Great Inn was built as a caravanserai for travelling merchants, with a central courtyard around a domed octagonal mescit (small mosque) raised on columns over a fountain. The two storeys of arched cells around the perimeter, once stables and merchants' rooms, now house artisan workshops, a few craft shops, and a café in the courtyard.

It is one of the most atmospheric corners of old Nicosia, and a logical pause between the Selimiye and the Kyrenia Gate. Free to enter; the shops keep their own hours but the courtyard is almost always open during the day.

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A story
The Büyük Han was built by Muzaffer Pasha in 1572, the year after the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus. Under British rule it was used as Nicosia's central prison; chains were driven into the walls and travellers and prisoners shared the same arches. Restoration in the 1990s stripped out the prison era and brought the building back to something close to its original use, with workshops and a café in the old merchant cells.

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