Salamis Ruins

The grandest ancient site on the island, and gloriously uncrowded: a whole city-state sprawling through eucalyptus and sand dunes on the east coast, six kilometres north of Famagusta. Legend hands it a Trojan-War founder in Teucer, but what you actually wander through is Roman and Byzantine Salamis — a colonnaded gymnasium lined with headless statues, a theatre that seated thousands, and vast bath houses scattered with mosaic and marble. Walk far enough and the columns are entirely yours, the sea glinting through the trees. The site is huge, flat and shadeless, so it rewards the prepared.