The Byzantine Museum contains the richest and most representative collection of Byzantine art of the island.  The core of the collection consists of 48 icons, which come from churches all over Cyprus and from the “Synodikon” of the church of Panagia Phaneromeni, which initially was intended to house the Cyprus Byzantine Museum.  These icons were displayed at the “Tresor de Chypre” exhibition, which was held in Paris in 1967, and subsequently traveled to various European towns.  Thanks to that exhibition important icons from the north of the island, which later came under Turkish occupation, were kept in the Archbishopric and are now on display in the Byzantine Museum.

About 230 icons dating from 9th to the 19th century, as well as typical products of the Byzantine minor art of Cyprus, such as sacred vessels, vestments and books, are on display.  They are exhibited in three large rooms in the basement of the Centre.  Occupying a special place in the collection are seven fragments of the 6th century mosaics from the apse of the church of Panagia Kanakaria at Lythrankomi and 36 fragments of wall painting of the late 15th century from the church of Christ Antiphonitis at Kalogrea.  These, together with icons from various looted churches in the occupied north, which were recovered following court trials or donations from abroad,  bear witness to the brutal destruction of our cultural heritage and the illicit traffic of antiquities in the Turkish occupied part of Cyprus.

The first room of the Byzantine Museum was inaugurated on 18 January 1982 by Archbishop Chrysostomos I and the then President of the Republic Spyros  Kyprianou.  Six years later the Byzantine Museum assumed its present form with the completion of a new wing.  It is continuously being enriched with new acquisitions and repatriated objects, illegally exported from the occupied north.

The visitor to the Byzantine Museum has the opportunity to journey through 1500 years of the island’s history, from the art of the early Byzantine period (4th c – 649), to that of the period of the Arab raids (649-965), the mid-Byzantine period (965-1191 and to that of Frankish (1191 -1489), Venetian (1489 – 1571) and Turkish rule (1571 – 1878).