A once beautiful seaside town, and a holiday hotspot loved by many Hollywood stars including Elizabeth Taylor, has been left eerily empty for more than 50 years.
Varosha in Cyprus was one of Europe’s smartest resorts, but its fate changed rapidly after the Turkish army invaded the northern part of the island on July 20, 1974, in response to an attempted coup sponsored by the Greek junta five days prior.
The soldiers’ arrival prompted 180,000 Greek Cypriots to flee Cyprus’ northern third, including 15,000 Varosha residents, who had to leave behind most of their possessions and properties.
Varosha has remained an abandoned ghost town since, frozen in time and cordoned off by the military. Now haunting photos show the once beautiful seaside resort has been left to rot with its buildings crumbling into disrepair.
The former bustling streets haven’t been lined with people in decades as churches lay forgotten, shops lie empty and the sea laps on the abandoned shores.
An old school and Toyota dealership have been left to decay while several former hotel tower blocks lie empty – a reminder of the area’s former identity as a popular beach resort.
At its peak, Varosha had beds for around 10,000 tourists and had a population of around 25,000 people in 1973.
On the south side of Varosha/Maras stands the Golden Sands Hotel which opened in 1974 and is purported to have been the first ever seven-star hotel.
The hotel was so big that it had an internal mini railway to take guests around, however it was only open a short while before the war broke out.
Dimitri Bourriau, a French photographer who specialises in capturing the beauty of abandoned buildings, visited the forgotten resort.
He told MailOnline: “Nothing could stop nature from reclaiming its rights over the area’s various buildings. The vegetation has spread most rampantly in the northern quarter,”
In October 2020 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the then prime minister of Northern Cyprus – a self-proclaimed entity recognised only by Ankara – Ersin Tatar decided to reopen the area to visitors.
Figures released claimed the ghost town has attracted more than 1.8 million tourists over the past four years and topped the charts of dark tourism destinations.
Hubert Faustmann, a professor of history and international relations at the University of Nicosia, previously told Express.co.uk: “The section found itself in the top tourist sites in terms of dark tourism, so they started to open up certain parts of Varosha, and it’s now a tourist destination with guided tours, with e-bikes, vehicles and coffee shops.
“Varosha is being used as a tourist destination, as a tourist attraction, without a single inhabitant prior to 1974 returning. It’s changed in the sense that it’s open to the public, but it’s not open for return.”
Travel restrictions had previously been eased in 2003, when former residents had been allowed to peer into the forgotten resort – but not to repossess their homes.
