Filenews 28 August 2021 - by Dora Christodoulou
During the European Capital of Culture, in 2017, the residents of Pafos were surprised to see most of them transformed day by day in front of them a huge space in the heart of the city's shopping centre, from a hotbed of abandonment and decline to an impressive hive of cultural and commercial activities. It was the Hani of Ibrahim, a place that in the 19th and until the middle of the 20th century was a constituent element of everyday life, commercial activities and the movement of the inhabitants of the island.
And today, the Municipality of Pafos has already put in place an ambitious plan for the revival of the other three hanis of the city. The second of them, the Hani of Fellahoglou, from the street on which it is located, on the borders of the shopping centre and the old Turkish Cypriot district of Mouttalos, has already begun to be transformed from a building "fossil" into a living cell of actions with its redevelopment. And the effort will continue, since most of them may have connected the word "inn" with the two mentioned above, but Pafos numbered four inns,150 years ago, all of which had a weighty importance in the everyday life of the city at the time.
In about three months, the Hani of Fellahoglou - with a spend of €125,000 - will be revived and ready to be reconnected, after decades of "silence" with the modern everyday life of Pafos. The Municipal Authority believes that this new project will contribute even more to the promotion and beautification of the historic commercial centre of Pafos, while giving further dynamics to the commercial movement of the region.
"At the time of the coexistence of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, at a time with a purely rural structure for the city and its people", point out municipality officials, "the inns of Pafos were places of daily activities and social interactions. Decades later, after the turbulent period of the Turkish mutiny and then the Turkish invasion, the spaces declined until they passed into oblivion, vegetating only thanks to the existence of three or four craftsmen in their now deserted spaces".
The inn, a Turkish word derived from the Persian khan, which means a group of travellers who travelled long distances, hosted travellers of past centuries with their animals and wagons, who spent the night in the buildings and its inner courtyard. They had stables for animals on the ground floor and bedrooms on the floor above, while there was usually a café, a kitchen, a grocery store and a workshop for the discarding of animals. After the bloody intercommunal conflicts of the period 1963-64, their abandonment and desolation began, which also contributed to a certain extent to the decline of the historic centre of the city.
The inns of Pafos, known until recently to the older people of the city, came to the fore and became the "property" of all, thanks to the European Capital of Culture. Ibrahim's Hani was chosen from the beginning by the staffs of the Organization to be the emblematic project of the new Pafos, the project that would symbolize the rebirth of the city through the redevelopment works that were then in progress, as well as the intercultural character that has always characterized Pafos.
The head of the infrastructure of "Pafos 2017" during the operation of the city as an ECoC, architect Yiannis Koutsolambros, told "F" that when Pafos claimed the role of European Capital of Culture, Ibrahim's Hani entered the priorities of the municipality for restoration and development with co-financing of the European Regional Development Fund. The aim of the project, he pointed out, was to create an atmosphere in the area where the memories of the past will come to life and redefine the character of Hani and the historical centre of the city, while at the same time achieving business sustainability and generally improving the quality of life of the people of Pafos.
Reorganization and revitalization of the traditional centre
The Mayor of Pafos, Phaedon Phaedonos, points out the depressing and chaotic, as he said, image that prevailed in the area just a few years ago where the 'redevelopment Hani of Fellahoglou is located, as well as the Hani of Ibrahim.
"With a lot of effort and a lot of will," he added, "we have begun and continue the work of the total redevelopment of the area. With the Hani of Ibrahim at its core and now with the redevelopment of the other hanis of the city, we are attempting as a Local Authority to reorganize and revitalize the entire traditional centre. With the completion of the effort, the city will show a tangible model of how a neglected and in a state of decline key area can be transformed into a lung of economic and social vitalization and recovery."
