Residents call for action on Famagusta church

Residents of Famagusta on Tuesday called on the bi-communal technical committee for cultural heritage to preserve the Ayia Paraskevi church in northern Varosha.

The state of the church has been monitored by the technical committee for a long time, its chief Takis Hadjidemetriou has said although part of its ceiling has collapsed.

The group Famagusta, Our Town, with more than 17,500 members, and another group of Turkish Cypriots who aspire to return Varosha to its legal owners called Famagusta Initiative pressed the committee to move on with the church’s restoration.

Famagusta, Our Town’s Pavlos Iacovou said the church is ready to collapse.

“There are so many monuments in need of preservation and we need to find funding for the project,” Hadjidemetriou said.

“There is an ongoing inspection to determine the damage and the total cost of the works,” he added.

Ayia Paraskevi church is estimated to have been built in the 16th century but the only surviving part of the original building is the arch.

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.