Astromeritis

Astromeritis is a village of Nicosia in Cyprus and it is situated 39 kilometers west of Nicosia, 71 kilometers north of Limassol, 77 kilometers northwest of Larnaca and 116 kilometers northeast of Paphos.

Built at an altitude of 180 meters in the Morphou plain and on the verge of the green line, Astromeritis of the approximately 3,000 inhabitants, has cultivated land with citrus, grain crops, potatoes, but also livestock units and several factories, shops, supermarkets and many more. The village has a kindergarten and a primary school, while the community consists of stone-built buildings and cobblestone streets in the old part of the settlement. Several of the houses here stand out for their traditional architecture, a two-room bedroom, a paved courtyard, and around it the barn and the shed, the well and the oven. The newer part of the settlement with the modern buildings spreads along the Nicosia-Troodos road, while in the west of the community there are two refugee settlements for the displaced Greek-Cypriot refugees who arrived here after the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the occupation of Morphou by the Turks.

The village was inhabited under the Frankish rule, when it was a feudal estate, while under the Venetian rule it appeared on maps of that time, and regarding the origins of its name there are various versions. The first version refers to the inhabitants who left Asinos of the Peloponnese and coming to Cyprus, founded the homonymous city. Some of them had left the village of Astromeri and Astros Kynourias and founded the village of Astromeritis. The second version states that the name comes from the inhabitants of Pitsilia who started at noon from their villages and arrived in the area with the appearance of the first star in the sky, that is, at dusk (astro is “star” in Greek and meros is the “place” – so it’s the place of the stars). The third version claims that the villagers, when they went in the evening to get water out of the well, they saw the shadow of the stars glow in the water. After their failed attempt to pull the stars from there, they told their story to residents of neighboring villages, who called them, jokingly, astronomers and the place Astromeritis.

The village’s only church is to the west and it is a stone-built Basilica dating from 1875, built with stone from the river and dedicated to St. Avksivios. Inside it is adorned with one of the three wooden carved iconostasis in the whole of Cyprus (the other one is located in Akanthos and the other at the Monastery of Machaira), as well as the icon of the Saint of the 17th century. Agios Avksivios celebrates twice a year, on the 17th of February and on the 17th of September.