In the late 1940s, two luxury hotels were built in Cyprus: the Curium Palace and the Ledra Palace in Nicosia. Both were authored by Israeli Benjamin Ginzburg, and both hotels have become iconic for the cities.

Alas, the Ledra Palace happened to be in no man’s land, with the UN military personnel stationed there at present. And the Curium Palace in Limassol was suddenly demolished in the summer of 2023, when we were working on this project, despite numerous public protests.

A cute testimony about spontaneous love for the building was shared on the Cypriot website Dom.Live: in 1947, Andreas Anastasiou, a Limassol resident, celebrated his wedding in this hotel. When driving past the hotel in a morning of the summer of 2023, he saw that it was being demolished. He grabbed one of the abandoned window frames and took it home, where he hung it above the entrance as a memory of the hotel.

All that remains of the hotel with a swimming pool is a square and two fountains.

I saw a photo from the 1950s of children playing in this fountain.

I hope the public garden will remain and it will be a reminder of the fact that there was a hotel here.

Next we continue along Anastasi Sioukri Street to Makarios III Avenue.