Anafotia ( or Αναφωτία; ) is a village located in the

Larnaca District The Larnaca District, or simply Larnaca (also Larnaka), is one of the six districts of Cyprus. Its capital is Larnaca. It is bordered on the east by Famagusta District, on the north by Nicosia District and on the west by Limassol District. A sma ...

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

, west of

Larnaca Larnaca, also spelled Larnaka, is a city on the southeast coast of Cyprus and the capital of the Larnaca District, district of the same name. With a district population of 155.000 in 2021, it is the third largest city in the country after Nicosi ...

. In 1994, the official name of the village became Anafotida (), following a decision by the then-government of Cyprus to make the names of villages on the island more Greek. However, locally the village is still referred to as ''Anafotia''. The naming of the village, according to ''The Great Cyprus Encyclopaedia,'' derived either from the name “Agia Foteini” or “Fotou,” the latter meaning 'light' There is some evidence to suggest the name is derived from the Greek word for light, or fire, ''fotia,'' (φωτιά) as the Turkish name for the village, Akkor, translates into English as meaning 'incandescent'. Anafotia is mainly agricultural, with tomatoes being a dominant crop. The village centre is small, but there are a number of cafes, a branch of the

Co-operative Bank Cooperative banking is retail and commercial banking organized on a cooperative basis. Cooperative banking institutions take deposits and lend money in most parts of the world. Cooperative banking, as discussed here, includes retail banking carr ...

and four churches. The original church is dedicated to St Photeine. A new church was begun in the 1930s dedicated to St Dimitrianos. In his 1936 book ''Historic Cyprus'' the British colonial officer

Rupert Gunnis Rupert Forbes Gunnis (11 March 1899 – 31 July 1965) was an English collector and historian of British sculpture. He is best known for his ''Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851'', which "revolutionized the study of British sculpture, pr ...

thought the new church was so badly constructed it 'may well fall down', a prediction that came true twenty years later. In his book ''Strolling around Cyprus: Larnaka, City and District,'' Giorgos Karouzis wrote: 'While strolling along Anafotia, one mainly gets to see cultivated expanses of land. In particular, the village produces citrus fruit, watermelons, melons, tomatoes and cucumbers. A special place among the cultivations is held by the olive groves and the vineyards. In fact, according to the elderly residents of the village, as Karouzis preserves, the community used to be covered with even more vineyards which occupied large expanses of land. However, apart from cultivated pieces of land, there are also the uncultivated ones which take up 1000 square metres of land.' During the Greek Cypriot uprising against British rule from 1955 to 1959, which aimed to secure union of Cyprus with the

Kingdom of Greece The Kingdom of Greece (, Romanization, romanized: ''Vasíleion tis Elládos'', pronounced ) was the Greece, Greek Nation state, nation-state established in 1832 and was the successor state to the First Hellenic Republic. It was internationally ...

through the process of

Enosis ''Enosis'' (, , "union") is an irredentist ideology held by various Greek communities living outside Greece that calls for them and the regions that they inhabit to be incorporated into the Greek state. The idea is related to the Megali Idea ...

, EOKA fighter Michalakis Parides, who was born in Anaphotia, died in a shoot out with British troops in 1958, in the village of Vavla, near

Pano Lefkara Pano Lefkara () is a village on the island of Cyprus famous for its lace, known as lefkaritika in (Greek: λευκαρίτικα) and silver handicrafts. The village takes its name from the white of its silica and limestone: Lefkara is derived fro ...

. A statue of him stands in the centre of

, outside the Archaeological Museum. In the 2008 presidential election the village voted overwhelmingly for the right-wing DISY candidate

Ioannis Kasoulidis Ioannis Kasoulides (; born 10 August 1948 in Nicosia, Cyprus) is a Cypriot politician, party member of DISY and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus. He has served in the same position from 1997 until 2003, and again from 2013 to 2018. He was ...

(68 percent), against the Communist Party

AKEL The Progressive Party of Working People (, , ΑΚΕΛ or AKEL; ) is a Marxist–LeninistHelena Smith, Cyprus gets ready for a communist 'takeover''The Guardian 2008 communist party in Cyprus. AKEL is one of the two major parties in Cyprus, and ...

candidate

Dimitris Christofias Dimitris (Δημήτρης) is the Modern Greek form of the older forms Demetrios, Dimitrios (Δημήτριος, usually Latinized as Demetrius) and may refer to: * Dimitris Arvanitis (born 1980), Greek professional football defender who plays for ...

(32 percent).Government of Cyprus Statistical Service

Notable people

* Ioannis Eoannou,

EOKA The Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA ; ) was a Greek Cypriot nationalist guerrilla organization that fought a campaign for the end of Cyprus#Cyprus under the British Empire, British rule in Cyprus, and for enosis, eventual union with K ...

fighter *

Stass Paraskos Stass Paraskos (; 17 March 1933 – 4 March 2014) was a British-Cypriot painter, sculptor, and writer. Born and raised in Cyprus, he spent much of his life working and teaching in England, where he famously became embroiled in a 1966 obscenity ...

, artist and founder of the

Cyprus College of Art The Cyprus College of Art (CyCA) is an artists' studio group, located in the village of Lempa on the west coast of Cyprus. It was founded in 1969 by the artist Stass Paraskos; the current director is the Cyprus-based artist Margaret Paraskos. H ...

* Michalakis Parides, EOKA fighter (killed in action 1958)

References

{{Larnaca District Communities in Larnaca District