Cyprus museum showcases rare religious treasures recovered after looting

By Michele Kambas

NICOSIA (Reuters) - A museum that opened this week in Cyprus showcases priceless early Christian artworks, many of which were recovered after being stolen from churches in the north of the war-split island.

The Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation opened on March 18 in the capital Nicosia after five years of extensive renovations. It features mosaics, icons and wall frescoes representing some of early Christianity's finest and rarest works. 

Many of the exhibits were looted by smugglers after a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup, and trafficked on the black market.

Over the years, Cypriot authorities have doggedly tracked down and reclaimed numerous stolen works, putting them in museums they hope can be temporary, if peace talks one day allow the island to be united again.

"The looting, the destruction was on a great scale," said the museum's director, Dr Ioannis Eliades. "We have calculated that more than 20,000 icons have been stolen and disappeared from the churches."

"We are still searching for them."

The museum includes rare mosaics from the early 6th century AD, fitted into a reproduction of an apse as was the original, from the Church of Panagia Kanakaria at Lythrangomi in north Cyprus.

Even before the war, the mosaic was well documented by archaeologists as a rare work of art that had survived iconoclasm - where use of religious images was banned by Byzantine emperors throughout the region. 

But the depiction of Christ, the Virgin Mary, archangels and apostles was hacked off the walls in the late 1970s, chopped into pieces and sold onto the black market. Most of the pieces were later discovered in private collections, recovered by Cyprus after litigation.       

Eliades hopes the museum will inspire people and educate them on the extent of damage wrought to Cyprus's cultural heritage by conflict. 

"We want the new generation to understand what happened on our island, and why it is important to safeguard even the smallest piece which we can bring (home)."

(Reporting By Michele Kambas)