A place for fun and games

KRITOU TERRA is one of those ‘past times’ villages; a truly unique place where visitors are able to soak up the sights, scents and sounds of a bygone era.
Despite being populated by mainly elderly and somewhat ‘creaky’ residents, there is a strong sense of pride at the lack of ‘concrete development’ within the heart of the village. Walking through a narrow lane leading to the coffeeshop, you pass blue doors, lush flower gardens, yards packed with fruit trees and vegetable plots. You feel yourself slipping back to a time when the pace of life was slower, when man was more in tune nature.
Villager Savvas Makrides was one chap who certainly had his finger on the pulse when it came to the very basic nature of his fellow man when, in 1876, he established a ‘kazino’ at the far end of the village. The move was virtually unthinkable in his time.
The word ‘casino’ comes from the Latin ‘Casa’, meaning small house. According to Wikipedia, the word changed to refer to a building built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger villa or palazzo. Such buildings were used to host civic town functions – including dancing, music listening and gambling.
There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. In modern day Italian, this term designates a bordello (also called “casa chiusa”, literally “closed house”), while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.
Archaeologists have since excavated similar sites across Greece from as early as the 4th and 5th centuries, which now suggests that many ordinary houses were, in fact used, both as residences and for other, somewhat more dubious, purposes.
This may explain the long-standing mystery of why archaeologists have found little evidence of bawdy, Greek taverns despite us all reading about them in classic literature.
In the 1870s, Savvas Makrides paid £5 to build this coaching inn-come casino; no doubt gentlemen having travelled for days by horse and carriage from as far away as Nicosia would have required some much needed physical and emotional sustenance.
Wiley Mr Makrides, who started off as one of the poorest villagers, soon ended up as the richest – able to buy 5,000 acres of land from money all of which was generated from the lucrative business. 
The ‘casino’ was primarily a place where men gambled and drank 400g shots of Zivania for one piaster. Come Saturday night the place hotted up somewhat with the arrival of ‘ballet dancers’ brought in on a weekly basis from Egypt, Turkey and Syria.
Naturally these foreign lovelies would indulge in all manner of enthusiastic and tantalising overtures to relieve the men of their winnings. As a brothel/café/gaming house it thrived, with men from other villages congregating in Kritou to afford themselves of all three attractions. The phenomenon was ostensibly accepted by the villagers who soon realised the benefits of such tourist traffic and the all important extra revenue it generated.
This specific casino is the sole survivor and is unique in that it boasts some very attractive primitive wall paintings. The venue attracted attention of the Department of Antiquities and specifically the employ of the restoration talents from the Paphos division, who sought to secure the building as a heritage site, restoring its faded images and crumbling structure to its former glory.
The wall paintings illustrate the capture of the folk hero Athanasios Diakou, the ‘strong man’ who died in 1821 at 33 – just one month before the revolution.
He is shown standing like a giant between two soldiers; in his right hand he carries a broken sword, and experts think this illustrates his capture after the battle of Alamanos. The soldiers wear the Greek Muslim headgear typical of residents of the area of Aidoniou. Also portrayed is the image of a young woman with long, black hair clutching a bunch of spring flowers.
She is believed to be Chrystallo and, according to legend she tried to kill Omer Vrioni to save her lover Diakou, who had by this time fallen into the hands of the enemy. There is also a bit of a sexed up version of this story given by the villagers, which is also popular among Cypriot puppeteers retelling the tale. They say that Chrystallo rushed to the wounded Diakou after her clothes were ripped off by the soldiers and ‘lay on top of him’.
These delicate yet strongly emotive images are rare examples of folk art in a land where the ancient, iconic image rules supreme and have been rightly earmarked for restoration.
Years of painstaking work has gone into restoring both the building and the wall paintings and Vangelis Hadjistephanou who heads the restoration dept in Paphos is proud of the work he and his team have achieved. So what were the challenges he faced in the restoration?
“The work started in 1987 and we had very little to go on. The paintings had been badly damaged by damp, years of cigarette smoke and the open fire but we were able to define under some of the works outlines which we followed and using the same type of paint and colours we painstakingly recreated parts of the images which had been lost to the elements.
“The place had also been used as a storehouse for carobs and potatoes and the structure had to be re built using the same stones and same method of building. In every respect it was a rebuild but one that had to be done as sensitively as possible to recreate the style of the period when it first flourished.”
Vangelis is a man who is deeply passionate about his work and one cannot help but be drawn into his acute interest in each and every project he undertakes. We left the now beautifully restored casino to visit the local coffeeshop. While there, a group of elderly men set about claiming their sole knowledge of the casino was one of a liquid refreshment venue with a bit of gambling on the side.
Any mention of Saturday night fever in the form of ballet dancers wafting around in flimsies was met with wry smiles and the odd mutual nudge in the ribs. Some of the older men remembered the next owner Yiorgos Papaeti using the venue as only a place to play cards – around 1912 – and the wall paintings were clearly in place then.
No one actually knows the name of the artist, some say he was Turkish and clues are there to give some credence to this theory as the style of painting does have a certain Ottoman feel to them.
What is even more important is the role the Antiquities Department have in our lives today. We all bemoan the lack of ‘cultural tourists’, the lack of promotion for those wanting to visit our island and see all the restorations, wonderful churches, mosaics, etc. It’s just deeply comforting to know that despite the economic climate the department is taking the long view and recreating such tourist gems as the Kritou Terra Kazino.
When times get better, we will be able to welcome tourists to a slightly modern heritage site – and one that still reverberates to the cult of that naughty Aphrodite.

My thanks to the translator and researcher, Evangelia.