There are no special features in Cypriot military architecture; the Lusignans were content to adopt the fashion evolved in France and Syria without adding anything.

If Kyrenia Castle (thirteenth century), St. Hilarion (thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth), Kantara (fourteenth) and Kolossi (fifteenth) have no ribbed vaults there are examples of this in France also: Boulogne Castle (1231) has semi-circular barrel vaults and cupolas, except in the three state rooms; Gréoux Castle near Manosque, which apparently dates from the fourteenth century, has only pointed barrel vaults and its square keep is exactly like the one at Kolossi.

There was a change in the twelfth century from square keeps to better designs but there are very many instances of their persistence right to the end of the Middle Ages such as Castelnau de Bretenoux (thirteenth century); Lesparre (fourteenth); Pierrefonds (fifteenth) and many others.

Stone machicolations, of which Syria, at Karak and Krak des Chevaliers, can show examples earlier than any that survive in France, only appear in Cyprus in the fifteenth century, at Bellapais, Kyrenia, Kiti and St. Hilarion.

The most original form of military architecture in Cyprus can be seen in the design of some of the towers at Kantara and Buffavento which are not semi-circular but shaped as two semi-circles conjoined and linked by a tangent. Similar designs existed in France from the twelfth century, for instance the oval keep of St. Sauveur (Yonne).

The art of fortification shows little development in Cyprus in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries but at the end of the fifteenth, when the Kingdom became a Venetian colony and the danger of Muslim invasion grew more menacing every day, Venice had recourse to the best military engineers and the most advanced techniques. Among her own citizens she employed the two Sanmicheli, who fortified the coasts of Crete and Famagusta.

These modern defences are the earliest and most perfect of their species; Cyprus in around 1500 was far in advance of France where the fortifications which were built were increasingly more out of date in their technique or else were the work of second-rate Italian military engineers poorly supported. It would be no exaggeration at all to say that the ramparts of Famagusta were a century ahead of anything in France, which had to wait for Vauban and knew nothing of the Sanmicheli.