Cyprus

Cyprus is one of the most popular holiday destinations in the Mediterranean. UK holidaymakers in particular, arrive in their thousands every year to bask and boil in the island's 300 plus days of sunshine, very much at home with the island's colonial past.

Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia. It lies in the eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey and at what was, in ancient times, the seafaring crossroads of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Its strategic importance made it much sought after and there have been lengthy occupations by Greeks, Levantines, Turks and latterly the British.

Cyprus has a large central plain, the Mesaoria, with mountain ranges of Kyrenia and Pentadactylos and the Troodos massif. The climate is typical Mediterranean, with hot dry summers and cool rainy winters. There can even be winter snow in the Troodos mountains.

The capital city, Nicosia, is virtually in the centre of the island. All the other major cities are coastal - Paphos to the south-west, Limassol in the south, Larnaca south east, Famagusta to the east and Kyrenia in the north.

Since 1960 Cyprus has been a sovereign republic and since 1994 a member of the European Union. It is also a divided island since a Turkish invasion in 1974 when communities were forcibly partitioned north and south.