Qualla: North Nicosia

North Nicosia: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michal Klajban, CC BY-SA 4.0. A United Nations officer drew the line in green pencil across a map of Nicosia in 1963, and that color became the name of a wound that has not closed. The Green Line still runs through the city, threading between Sarayonu Square in the north and Eleftheria Square in the south, separating the Selimiye Mosque from the cathedral that became the mosque, dividing one capital into two. North Nicosia sits on the northern side, the de facto capital of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state recognized only by Turkey. To walk its streets is to walk through a city that has been answering the same question for sixty years: what does it mean to belong somewhere when half your neighbors had to leave?

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Image: Michal Klajban | CC BY-SA 4.0

North Nicosia: The Walled City

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. Venetian engineers built the circular fortifications in the 1560s, eleven heart-shaped bastions ringing the old city in a defensive geometry that proved insufficient against the Ottoman siege of 1570. The walls survive, and inside them North Nicosia keeps its richest historical l...

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Image: A.Savin | FAL

North Nicosia: Nineteen Seventy-Four

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Leventis Museum, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 15 July 1974, officers of the Greek military junta backed a coup against President Makarios in pursuit of enosis, union with Greece. Five days later the Turkish army landed at Kyrenia. By August, after a second offensive, Turkish forces controlled the northern 37 percent of th...

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Image: User:Leventis Museum | CC BY-SA 3.0

North Nicosia: Buyuk Han and the Caravanserai City

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:MatthiasKabel, CC BY-SA 3.0. Of all the buildings inside the walls, the Buyuk Han may be the most quietly beautiful. The Ottomans built it in 1572, the year after the conquest, as the largest caravanserai on the island. Sixty-eight rooms arranged around a central courtyard, with a small octagonal mosque in t...

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Image: User:MatthiasKabel | CC BY-SA 3.0

North Nicosia: The Crossings

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:MatthiasKabel, CC BY-SA 3.0. For nearly thirty years, no one crossed. The Green Line was closed, the buffer zone patrolled by UN peacekeepers, and the two halves of Nicosia developed in parallel solitude. On 23 April 2003, the Ledra Palace crossing opened. Greek Cypriots walked north for the first time since...

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Image: User:MatthiasKabel | CC BY-SA 3.0

North Nicosia: Living City

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seksen iki yüz kırk beş, CC BY-SA 3.0. Beyond the walls, North Nicosia is a working modern capital. Four universities, the largest being Near East University, host more than 26,000 students from across the world. The Dereboyu district has filled with restaurants, hotels, and the kind of high-rises that change a skylin...

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Image: Seksen iki yüz kırk beş | CC BY-SA 3.0