Korakou

Katydata is a small village in the upper Solea Valley, 56 kilometres from Nicosia, where the Karkotis and Setrahos rivers meet — the name comes from the Greek 'kato' (under) and 'ydor' (water), describing the village's setting between the two streams. The village itself is unassuming (population under 150, a single nineteenth-century church of Agios Ioannis Theologos), but it sits next to one of the most historically significant industrial sites in Cyprus: the Skouriotissa copper mine, the largest mine on the island, worked since antiquity and still active today, producing copper cathodes. A small mining museum nearby tells the story. Combine the visit with a drive through the surrounding Solea villages and the Painted Churches cluster, or use Katydata as the quietest possible base for that exploration.

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.