Kolossi Tower, near Limassol, Cyprus

The village of Kolossi was known in the Middle Ages Le Colos. The fief was given to the Hospitallers by King Hugh I in 1210. I was confiscated from them in 1308 and handed over to the order of Saint John of Jerusalem. According to Alexander Drummond in 1750, ‘from hence the country is open and pleasant to Colos, which is a fine village, where there was formerly a commanderie of the Knights Hospitallers. Lewis de Magnac, Grand Commander in Cyprus, built in this place a plain square and strong tower, which still remains; the front exhibiting this appearance: it is about seventy feet high and fifty four feet broad, adorned with coats of arms’. But the Cypriot folklore has another story to tell: A certain King gave the Queen of Cyprus as much land as could be seen from the place where the tower now stands. So, the Queen artfully built this high tower and from its top was able to survey all the peninsula of Kourida or Akrotiri. The tower was more or less ruined by the Genoese invasion in 1373 and 1402 and by the Moslem invasions of 1413, 1425, and 1538. It was reconstructed in the 15th century. In 1488, when George Cornaro persuaded his sister Queen Catherine to abdicate, the Venetians gave him fourteen villages, including Colossi, which constituted the Commandery of Rhodes in Cyprus. During the ottoman period, the sugar refinery next to the castle continued to operate. An inscription on the gable records that it was reconstructed by Murat Pasha in 1591. Operations stopped when European sugar rendered it unprofitable. In the early twentieth century, the owner of Colossi appeared to be a certain Cypriot Copt named Sidarus Bishara. He was asked by the British High Commissioner of Cyprus to sell the castle to the English Order. The amount was agreed to £600. But Ms Bishara, having had a bad dream, intervened against the sale. Finally, the English Order partly acquired the castle which gave it the right to hold ceremonies within the edifice. Thus, as late as 1959, Lord Wakehurst, Lord Prior of St. John, held a full dress investiture of those recently admitted to the Order in Cyprus. Commandaria wine was, of course, offered to all attending. This special kind of port produced by the Knights since the early medieval period is still being produced and exported from Cyprus. [Enlart,C. 1899. L’Art Gothique et La Renaissance en Chypre. Paris: Ernest Leroux; Severis,R. 2011. Monuments and Memories, The Castles and Forts of Cyprus, Nicosia: Hellenic Bank]. The drawing is included in Gordon Hume’s book “Cyprus Then and Now”. The watercolour successfully illustrates the bright light of Cyprus and with a bit of artistic licence includes the blue of the sea next to the castle.