North of St. Sophia Cathedral in Nicosia, built by Eustorgius of Montaigu...
THE ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE

Note: descriptions (as seen around 1899) by Camille Enlart; pictures taken December 1, 2005.

"The palace of the archbishops of Cyprus was built by Eustorgius of Montaigu (1217-1250). It was much modified under his successors and in 1313, on the lst of May, the Greeks, enraged by the exactions of the Latin church, sacked it and tried to burn it down. In 1458, or early in 1459, it was sacked again by the nobles opposed to James the Bastard who was then archbishop.

There is little written evidence about its earlier appearance. In 1292 the cartulary of St. Sophia mentions a loggia belonging to the archbishop where the cathedral clergy held their sessions. In 1456-1457 there was in the archbishop's palace in Nicosia, as in the one at Auch or the bishop's palace at Tournai, a watch-tower permanently manned by six watchmen.

Today the palace and its dependencies have been converted into private houses occupled by Turkish families and a school (medrese) attached to the Great Mosque. These buildings cover a good portion of the north-east half of the precincts surrounding St. Sophia. The main one, now a rich Turkish house, forms a rectangle at the corner of the square and of the street facing the north doorway of the nave of the cathedral. It has a first floor above a ground floor to which has been added a batter not so much for purposes of support as to cause projectiles to ricochet when dropped from the machicoulis which once existed but have been replaced by a very low top floor. It must have been James the Bastard, archbishop from 1456 to 1459, who felt the need to turn his palace into a fortress; we know that while living there he was overtly preparing for his usurpation.

The present building has five to seven windows on each side, all modern. The ground floor has only two ancient windows on the side facing the cathedral, now blocked up; they are very narrow and rectangular, cut very high and looking like short arrow-slits but decorated with a moulded external splay made specially broad to offset the narrowness of the windows.

The carriage gateway which opens under a plain pointed arch at the eastern end of the building, facing the transept of St. Sophia, is also old.

Above it a stone carved with two escutcheons side by side has been built into the wall; the right-hand one is charged with a cross hastate and patté and the left-hand one with two fleurs-de-lis separated by a saltire running from the dexter angle to the point. Above and to the left of this the wall has been subsequently repaired by inserting a block carved with an escutcheon of Italian shape, enrigned with a mitre and bearing a chief charged with three roses above four fesses.

Finally, on the same face of the building at the level of the first storey can be seen a block carved in low relief ensigned with a mitre, the bearings being obliterated.

Next to this first building and close to the gate is a wing at right angles whose gable end faces the cathedral transept. lt has two storeys. On one of the corners a broad buttress like a square turret goes up as far as the first storey; the angle of the buttress has a torus moulding as was usual in Cyprus at the end of the Gothic period.

The other corner blends with the corner of another main building perpendicular to it and extending even further into the square. This last building is no longer in any particular style and ends at the street which opens into the square at the north-east corner, facing the east end of St. Sophia. (*) There is a covered bridge over this street consisting of a room carried on two arcades and a groined vault; it connected the archbishop's palace with the building that forms the east side of the square, now a school. (*) To the north of the buildings just described are extensive gardens. (*)

The single-storeyed building which has taken up the whole of the east side of the square extends around a large cloister whose garth is now an orchard; in the south-west corner is a small mosque (map right, click). These buildings must have replaced the former archiepiscopal school and the quarters of the cathedral staff. They are completely altered except for three pointed doorways set side by side (Fig. 346). Of these only the main one is important. The opening is in a massive projecting piece of masonry surmounted by a cornice in the form of an inverted Attic base; its arch is pointed, deep-set, wide and low. There are delicate mouldings on the angles and the imposts, about a metre above the ground, take the form of fourteenth-century capitals with low abacus and a concave bell carved with a drip-course astragal above which a row of curled-up maple leaves climb up and seem to give support to the impost. A porch of this kind gives useful shelter against the blazing sun and the torrential rains of Cyprus. The door opening out of it is modern and of no interest."

(*) Disappeared - Hans Doeleman, December 2005.