A Catalan traveller disguised as Ali Bey el Abbassi, son of Othman Bey of Aleppo, was on his way to Mecca when he stopped in Cyprus. A romantic visitor, he wanted to see the Palace of the Queen, so he set off for Buffavento:
When I consider the magnificence and luxury of this palace, a monument of the art of its age, and its remarkable and impregnable position, I recognise the abode of a mighty sovereign. It follows then that the Palace of the Queen was certainly built and inhabited in a pre-historic age. That it was erected by a king of the island, a rich and powerful sovereign, and that it was at the same time a fortress which defied attack, and a luxurious home in which the charms of society tempered the display of warlike power. But who was the prince who created it?