Katydata

Nikitari is a low-key village in the Solea Valley whose main reason to visit sits four kilometres up a forest road south of the village: the church of Panagia Phorviotissa, better known as Asinou. It is one of the ten UNESCO-listed Painted Churches and holds what many art historians consider the finest, most complete cycle of Byzantine frescoes in Cyprus — six centuries of painting on every interior surface, from twelfth-century saints to seventeenth-century donor portraits. Going through the church with the keykeeper who opens it is one of the genuinely transcendent small experiences on the island. Nikitari village itself is unassuming: a couple of coffee shops, a stone-built parish church, and the quiet pace of an inland farming community. The road in winds through pine forest from Astromeritis on the plain; allow most of an afternoon to do justice to the church.

Korakou sits in the Solea Valley north of the Skouriotissa copper mine — a stone-built village of around 500 people that has held onto its old water-mills, olive presses, and the quiet rhythm of a Troodos farming community. The forest land around is wild pine, and the lower slopes are planted in fruit trees, olives, and aromatic herbs (locals still distil essential oils from the wild crop). Three water-mills and two olive-mills survive in the village, with their original architecture intact and visible from the road. The village churches are unusually rich in icons and silver — the eighteenth-century Panagia Eleoussa, the 1697 church of the Apostle Loucas (the date is carved above the north entry), and the seventeenth-century Agios Mamas are all worth opening. References to the village go back to the Frankish period under variant spellings ('Coracu', 'Coraco') and the place has worn many names without losing its character.