At the foot of Stavrovouni, on its north side, is a tiny Gothic chapel built by King

Janus de Lusignan in 1421 and dedicated to the Passion. At the time of Enlarts visit
in 1899, the portraits of Janus and his wife Charlotte were fairly visible, together
with many other frescoes on its walls; these paintings have now almost disappeared.
The key of the chapel is kept by the Commissioner at Larnaca.
Where the high road crosses the boundaries of Larnaca and Limassol Districts is the
site of the battle of Khirokitia in 1425, when the chivalry of Cyprus went down before
the Mameluke invaders and the King of Cyprus was carried captive to Cairo.
[Sir Ronald Storrs and Bryan Justin OBrien, 1930, p. 89)
There is one great object of interest in Pyrga in the form of a minute Latin chapel,
once the centre of a monastery or manoir, which although much ruined, still
retains its barrel vault intact and some traces of its mediaeval paintings. [George
Geffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus, p. 340]
Since the visit of M. Enlart in 1899 this inscription has been unfortunately destroyed,
possibly by the boots of the rustics clambering up the wall to affix linen yarn around
the building, as a charm against epidemics, a custom referred to in a Latin invective
against the Greeks inscribed by some passing traveller inside the chapel. The chapel
was possibly in a ruined state at the end of the XVth century as dated inscriptions
scrawled on its walls go back to 170, 1522, 1524, and 1546.
This custom for which many reasons are given, and which has a remote antiquity,
resembles the infula garland of the ancients which was sometimes used for
decorating the walls of a building in white and red wool, but does not seem to be
associated with the idea of preservation from sickness.
On the walls are dim traces of panel pictures an dbuss of Saints in the usual
Byzantine manner of the XVth century, but with French inscriptions which may be
read with difficulty; La Pentecouste, La Cene dou Jeudi Saint: etc. The Last Supper
is curiously represented with Christ and St. Peter seated in high backed chairs under
canopies.
The most interesting feature of the interior is the still distinguishable painting of the
Crucifiction over the place where the altar formerly stood. The Crucifix is a poor,
distorted attempt with a strangely exaggerated figure. At the foot of the Cross kneel
two figures a King and a Queen, and these have perhaps been rightly identified with
the reigning King Janus de Lusignan and his Consort Charlotte de Bourbon, who had
been married in 1411. No inscription refers to these figures but considering the
probability, and the presence of the royal badge of Jerusalem and Cyprus used in the
decoration of the vault of the Chapel we can have little doubt of their identity.
The origin of this little chapel and of its circumjacent buildings remains a mystery.
Camille Enlart supposes it to have been built in the flourishing days of King Janus, a
few years before the Mameluke invasion, and to have been the private chapel of a
royal manoir. No such foundation is however referred to in the chronicles of the
middle XVth century.

Probably this little chapel built for the Latin rite was within a royal manor,
resembling the better-known manor or villa of Potamia near Dali, marking one of
those districts of Cyprus where the mediaeval European settlers established
themselves; nearer the shore were the great farms and sugar plantations of Kiti.
Five hundred years nearly have come and gone since a King and a Queen of Cyprus
knelt with trembling hearts within this little sanctuary on the eve of the battle of
Khirokitia their miniature realm reduced to bankruptcy by the exactions of the
powerful Genoese Republic, whilst the terrors of an Arab invasion loomed upon the
southern horizon. But for all these trials and sufferings and they were many
good King Janus (as he was known to his subjects) and his unfortunate Queen
maintained their position and their rank until the end. In spite of the Kings long
imprisonments in Genoa as a youth, and in Cairo in later years, the tumults and
disasters of his long reign, and his last days of lingering sickness, he left the world
regretted by his friends, respected by his enemies (28th June, 1432). His only
surviving monument and almost the only surviving memorial of the later Lusignan
dynasty in what was once a flourishing kingdom is this little wayside chapel built
not far from the scene of perhaps the finishing stroke of vengeful fate in the history of
mediaeval Cyprus.
[...] During the summer of 1911, this little building was repaired and enclosed with
an iron gate by the Curator of Ancient Monuments in spite of some slight local
protest on the ground that such proceedings interfered with certain usages such as
the very one of winding cotton around it, protested against more than three centuries
ago, in the inscription already referred to. [George Geffery, A Description of the
Historic Monuments of Cyprus, p. 341-343]
The shape of the chapel is oblong, roofed with appointed barrel vault strengthened by
transverse ribs with flattened ridges and springing from quadrant brackets. It was
isolated from the surrounding buildings but surrounded by a timbered portico except
at the east end. The straight wall of the chevet at this end is pierced by three pointed
windows with splays; they are of the same size but the middle one is set higher. In the
north and south sides are two doorways with lintels above which are pointed
relieving arches, and two low windows of the same shape close to the jambs of both
doorways, on their east side. It looks as though these windows had embrasures fitted
with stone benches like those in the archbishops chapel in Nicosia. In any case these
windows must have been closed with plain wooden planks as in the local houses and
in many churches. At the west end is a third pointed doorway with a lintel supported
on quadrant corbels; above it is a window like the upper window in the choir.
On the south, above the doorway and the window there is an arcaded belfry; the
pointed opening is crowned by a steeply-pointed pediment with a chamfered
moulding; on either side are two stone flagstaff-holders.
The stonework is more Byzantine than Gothic. The hard, dark-brown stone is
coarsely cut into large cubes which are separated by courses of stone chips; the
frames of the openings are in limestone, coarse-grained for the windows and doors
and the belfry but on the gables dead white in colour and crumbling into sand at the
slightest touch.

The special interest on the building resides in its paintings and inscriptions.
On the outside the only remaining fragment of the lintels of the doorways, viz. Half
the lintel of the southern one, is inscribed with the French name Bazoges in large
and quite handsome fifteenth-century Gothic minuscules. It is the beginning of an
inscription which I am unable to restore: Bazoges, which comes from the Latin
basilica, is fairly common as a place name and is sometimes used for a surname.
Above it is what looks like a fragment of a foliar scroll, also incised.
All the inside walls were covered with painted decorations but unfortunately scarcely
half of them have survived.
The wall at the east end has the most interesting paintings among which a large
central picture of the Crucifixion, which shows a king and a queen of Cyprus kneel on
gat the foot of the Cross. Going by the date given in the inscription on the opposite
wall, 1421, it must be Janus of Lusignan and Charlotte of Bourbon, whom he had
married ten years earlier. [...] The heads of the King and Queen are fairly well
preserved. Januss hair is brown, Charlottes blond. He wears a massive crown
decorated with fleurs-de-lis and a grey or light blue surcoat whose open, falling
sleeves are lined with a pattern vairy, green and white. The queen has a mantle lined
in the same way; her hair is long and she wears a pink tunic under a grey or white
surcoat which as wide openings at the sides. This is the French costume of the period
and only Queen Charlottes crown appears to owe something Byzantine art. There
are no coats of arms surviving near the two figures but the arches of the vaulting
have a continuous pattern of Jerusalem crosses, the heraldic significance of which is
unmistakable. [Camille Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 1899, p.
325-332]
The question arises: what was this chapel, founded by King Janus and surrounded by
buildings which have since disappeared? It is highly probable that there was here a
royal manor, built on a site very like the one at Potamia, which is not far away. In
1421 Janus, later so famous for his misfortunes, had hitherto known nothing but
prosperity. He even presumed on his good luck because he challenged the Sultan of
Egypt, an imprudent action which turned out disastrously for him. This is exactly the
period in which he erected those buildings, only to have them destroyed by the
Egyptian army five years later. Admittedly the chroniclers make no mention of this
villa perhaps it was never finished but then they scarcely say anything about the
more important Potamia, except to record its destruction by fire, and are equally
brief on the whole subject of the building works of King James, who established or
restored other manors also. This one remained in ruins, which is why the chapel has
remained in its original condition, not much vandalised by the Turks, who did not
bother themselves over an abandoned building, and at the same time protected
against complete demolition by the superstitious practices of the Greeks. [...] I
conclude that it was the neglect into which these ruins fell that was the cause of their
preservation. They are valuable by reason of the portraits they have preserved for us
and because of the exactly dated evidence which they provide on the state of
architecture in Cyprus in the early fifteenth century. Its progress thereafter was

strictly downhill as Byzantine and Italian influences eliminated the French. [Camille
Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 1899, p. 333]
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