Nicosia’s old town should be treated with more respect

With reference to the article ‘Onasagorou – The Poor Relation’(Sunday Mail, October 10), the news is encouraging.  The article is cheering.

However, aside from being pleased that the tide is slowly turning it is also urgent to encourage everyone to address the conditions and the manner in which people live downtown.

The conditions in which they live inform their attitude to their environment.  The poorer the environment the greater the propensity to treat it badly.

The worse it is treated the poorer it becomes and so on.  The graffiti besmirched building that Mr Orphanides is taking over, rubs shoulders with our building across the street.

In vain have we tried to advertise it – and thought we had done a reasonable job – but all that we did in effect was provide the graffitists with a wonderful working surface to let their limited imaginations fly.

So long as the old town is treated with a contempt born out of a sense of dissatisfaction (be it true or not) so will the downward spiral continue or a best be prolonged despite the best efforts of the commercial classes to lift the area up.

The heart of Nicosia needs more than restaurants, more than night life – it needs to embrace life in the fullest sense.

 

Jonathan Reddaway

Director, Mouson Property

Nicosia

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.