What was once an all-girls school is now a high school inside the Venetian walls of Nicosia. The building dates from 1857 and was founded by Archbishop Makarios I; it was the first girls’ school in Cyprus. Makarios I was energetic in setting up schools on the island, with the aim of overcoming illiteracy.
The exterior is mainly Greek neoclassical with Cypriot elements. In its early years the school had a single teacher and 115 students — so many that the older children worked as the teacher’s assistants in order to get everyone taught.
What it became
The school changed repeatedly. In 1903 it became a teacher-training school and an all-girls school. It closed temporarily during the events of 1974, then reopened for the 1975–76 school year under a new name, the Mixed School of Faneromeni, bringing the teachers’ school and the girls’ school together — by then some 458 students and 30 teachers. The Cyprus Paedology Academy and the Faneromeni girls’ school had shared the same building.
Under one roof
Later it became a public school for boys and girls. Today a kindergarten, pre-school, elementary school and high school are all housed under the same roof, and it runs as a full six-grade secondary school with two streams — Economics and Classical.
It stands among shops, cafés, restaurants and bars, so the building itself is the reason to walk over, and the streets around it are the reason to stay for a coffee or lunch afterwards.
More sightseeing around Nicosia
Panagia Faneromeni Church
Once the capital’s largest church — Byzantine, Latin and neoclassical outside, frescoed wall to ceiling inside.
Laiki Geitonia
Restored lanes inside the walls, taverns and souvenir shops, and the city’s main tourist office.
Athalassa National Forest Park
840 hectares of pine and eucalyptus on the capital’s edge, with running and cycling loops.
Panagia Chrysospiliotissa
A church inside a cave near Kato Deftera — ‘golden cave’ — early Christian, and closed whenever it rains.