Nicosia International Airport


NIA – Nicosia International Airport
Cyprus 1974. Cyprus 2013. 39 years later.
Then a newly built airport, now an abandoned building under United Nations jurisdiction inside the UN buffer zone, the demilitarized zone between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.
Abandoned violently in 1974 when the invasion from the Turkish forces occurred in Cyprus. An airport full of people that day, today looks exactly the way it was left back then. Its’ history and the stories I have read and heard, created me the desire to go there. I had to visit that place.
Its’ architectural design was award winning. The terminal at its latest form opened in 1968 only few years before the invasion. “Wherever you see a small whole on the building’s wall or on the abandoned Cyprus Airways aircraft”, the UN sergeant who accompanied me for the shooting explained “it’s coming from gunshot.”

Silence.