Choirokoitia Neolithic Settlement

Choirokoitia is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the eastern Mediterranean and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. People lived here from around the seventh millennium BC, in the aceramic Neolithic, when the settlement was already a substantial community of round stone and mudbrick houses built on a hillside above the Maroni valley and enclosed by a heavy defensive wall.

What survives is the ground plan of that village: circular dwellings, or tholoi, packed tightly together, the successive walls that were extended as the settlement grew, and the paths between them. The dead were buried beneath the floors of the houses, and the finds from those graves, along with stone vessels and tools, have made the site central to understanding how farming communities took hold on the island. Occupation ended abruptly, and the hill was left largely undisturbed until excavation began in the 1930s.

Five dwellings have been reconstructed near the entrance using the same materials and methods, which is what makes the visit work: the ruins themselves are foundations, and the replicas show what those foundations supported. The path through the site climbs the hillside, so the visit involves a steady walk up and back with the Maroni valley opening out behind you.