Filenews 29 January 2023 - by Dora Christodoulou
During the European Capital of Culture in 2017, the residents of Pafos were surprised to see a huge space in the heart of the city's commercial centre being transformed day by day in front of them, from a hotbed of abandonment and decline into an impressive hive of cultural and commercial activities. It was the Inn of Ibrahim, a place that in the 19th and until the middle of the 20th century was a component of everyday life, commercial activities and the movement of the inhabitants of the island and which, however, to the Paphites of the younger generations reminded nothing anymore.
Five years since then, Ibrahim's Inn has been a constituent element of the city's cultural, social and commercial life, to the extent that no one now considers it a "strange" element of everyday life. Today, what is changing anew, is the entry into the daily life of the Paphians of three more, forgotten, chania of the city who take turns to return to its daily life.
The Municipality of Paphos has already put in place an ambitious plan for the revival of the other three chania of the city, three spaces that were components of the social and commercial life of the old Estate in the last century, but mainly of its intercultural operation and the unprofitable coexistence of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.
The second of these, the Inn of Fellahoglou, from the homonymous street on which it is located, on the border of the shopping centre and the old Turkish Cypriot quarter of Mouttalos, has already begun to be transformed from a building "fossil" into a living cell of actions with its ongoing reconstruction. And the effort will continue, since most of them may have associated 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 daily life of the city at the time.
The Inn of Fellahoglou is revived with an expense of about €125,000 and will be ready to connect anew, after decades of "silence" with the modern everyday life of Paphos, in a few months. The municipal authority estimates that this new project will contribute even more to the promotion and beautification of the historic commercial centre of Pafos, while giving further momentum to the commercial traffic of the area.
"At the time of the coexistence of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, in an era with a purely rural structure for the city and its people", municipal officials point out, "the inns of Paphos were places of daily activities and social interactions. Decades later, after the turbulent period of the Turkish rebellion 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".
Hani, a Turkish word that came from the Persian khan, which means a group of travellers who travelled long distances, hosted the travellers of the past centuries with their animals and carriages, who spent the night in its buildings and inner courtyard. They had stables for the animals on the ground floor and bedrooms on the upper floor, while there were usually a café, a kitchen, a grocery store and a workshop for sheltering the animals. After the bloody intercommunal clashes of the period 1963-64, their abandonment and desolation began, which also contributed to some extent to the decline of the historic centre of the city.
The inns of Pafos, known until recently to the oldest of the people of the city, came to the fore and became the "property" of all, thanks to the European Capital of Culture. The Inn of Ibrahim was chosen from the beginning by the staff 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 projects that were then in progress, but also the intercultural character that has always characterized Pafos.
The head of the infrastructure of "Pafos 2017" during the operation of the city as European Capital of Culture, architect Yiannis Koutsolambros, states today to "F" that when Paphos claimed the role of European Capital of Culture, Ibrahim's Inn entered the priorities of the municipality for restoration and exploitation with co-financing of the European Regional Development Fund.
"The purpose of the project", he pointed out, "was to create an atmosphere in the space where the memories of the past will come to life and will redefine the character of Chania and the historic centre of the city and at the same time to achieve business sustainability and generally improve the quality of life of the people of Paphos".
Rejuvenation pattern
The mayor of Paphos, Phedonas Phedonos, points out the depressing and chaotic, as he said, image that prevailed in the area where the Inn of Fellahoglou under redevelopment, but also the Inn of Ibrahim, is located just a few years ago. "With a lot of effort and a lot of will," he added, "we started and continue the work of total redevelopment of the area. With the Inn of Ibrahim at its core and now with the redevelopment of the other 'chania' of the city, we are trying as a local authority to reorganize and revitalize the entire traditional centre. With the completion of the effort, the city will have a tangible model of how a neglected and declining key region can be transformed into a lung of economic and social vitality and recovery." The aim of the Municipality of Pafos, in addition to the aesthetic dimension of the restoration of the buildings and the messages that are still given today about the multiculturalism of the city, is to motivate the interest of mainly young creators who would like to be professionally and culturally active in places such as Hania, which now connect modern Paphos with its history. The importance of Chania in the course of the Republic of Cyprus through time, was stressed by the President of the Republic himself, inaugurating at that time the emblematic Inn of Ibrahim. President Anastasiades said that these projects are not only a model of good management, but also a tangible sample of the results that can be brought about by the constructive cooperation of local authorities with the Government and state services, for the benefit of citizens.
