After the establishment of a military base in Cyprus in 1878, the British were concerned about a new community center and decided to locate it near the water: this is how the ensemble we are now looking at was slowly being formed.

We see the building of Larnaca district administration (1881), a symmetrical building with no local features, like a large cottage or a railway station.

To the left of the administration house, there is another British building consisting of five identical sections: a warehouse where goods were stored and awaiting clearance. The customs building in the same modest vein is nearby, whose only accent is an attached outdoor terrace. Despite its blue coloring, a marker of belonging to Greek culture, this terrace is an English architecture token — like we’ve seen with Pierides House. I asked Edmund Haris, a British architectural historian, to comment on this colonial ensemble: “Here are elements so common for the language of Neoclassicism, that it seems to me superfluous to talk of national peculiarities.”

The whole square was, until relatively recently, a chaotic half-harbor space. It started to be a modern public space in the 1990s, when Georgios Christodoulides starred as Larnaka’s Mayor.

The warehouses are now home to the Cyprus Art Gallery and are one of the venues of the Larnaca Biennale.