Nicosia, Zypern

Nicosia is unlike any other European capital: a city whose division is immediately visible and whose reunification remains unresolved. The Old City sits inside a nearly perfect circular ring of Venetian walls from the 1560s — eleven pointed bastions, a masterpiece of Renaissance military engineering, still largely intact. Inside, the city is split by the Green Line, a strip of abandoned buildings and UN observation posts running from one side to the other. The Ledra Street pedestrian crossing — open since 2008 — allows passage with a passport in seconds; the contrast between the two sides is striking and instructive. In the Greek Cypriot south: the Cyprus Museum (the island's best collection, Bronze Age through Byzantine), the Cathedral of Saint John (fine 18th-century frescoes), the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, and the pleasant Laiki Geitonia neighbourhood with restored Ottoman-period houses. In the Turkish Cypriot north: the Selimiye Mosque (the converted Lusignan Cathedral of Saint Sophia, one of the finest Gothic buildings in the region), the Buyuk Han (the Great Inn, a magnificent 16th-century Ottoman caravanserai, now an arts centre), the Bedesten (a covered bazaar in a 14th-century Byzantine church), and the Venetian Column in Atatürk Square. Nicosia is the island's commercial and administrative capital — busier, more lived-in, and less tourist-oriented than the coastal resorts, but the more rewarding city for those interested in history, art, and the island's political complexity.