Having carb-loaded with manti and seen the sun drop from overhead I’m ready for a stroll down nearby Arista Street, through the market traders, to get a close-up of the Green Line. No, I’m not von Berlin, just naturally intrigued. For the tourist, the impact of partition is under whelming, there’s no build up, no suspense, just grey metal sheets stencilled with soldier caricatures making it clear that further progress is prohibited.

Beyond the oily soil demarking an area favoured by ad hoc motor-repair garages, the crumbling skeleton of an Armenian church lies close to the divide, sealed off for reasons of imminent collapse as much as anything. From the Greek side, the bell tower of a Catholic church looks down imperiously on the decay.

Continuing, the Green Line enters the shady streets of grand houses of Arabahmet. UN funded redevelopment has visited the district but has not resulted in a sterile gentrification, and balconied upper floors broadcast sounds of daily life; television, families living, pots and pans clanging across to the divide.

Surprisingly a sunshine-bright cubist mural lights up the side of the Cultural Centre – an award-winning commission from the British Council, executed by American artist Farad Nargol O’Neill to which both Turkish and Greek Cypriot youth contributed. Soon, I’m on the Venetian ramparts and to my left a children’s playground occupies the last bastion jutting into Nicosia. Through the slides and swings, a simple wire fence is the only barrier. Below the alphabet changes and traffic surges round the city walls. Greek and Greek Cypriot flags fly opposite those of Turkey and TRNC.

A visit to Lefkosa/Nicosia certainly highlights a north/south boundary but also marks a meeting of East and West. Whilst the past economic depravations of division have without doubt prevented the TRNC to progress in the manner of the south, in Lefkoşa, aspects both physical and cultural have been maintained, where elsewhere they are now lost for good. As money has started to filter in to the north, one can only hope that this lesson is not overlooked in the race to catch up.

Later, a Turkish Cypriot taxi driver bemoaned the distance between the island’s communities, “The old ones, my father, he speaks Greek but me and this generation, no”. Crossing the line in Cyprus is not hard and it’s not a case of taking sides, rather an opportunity to learn from another’s differing perspective and that’s an enduring benefit of travel.

Need to know

Nick Redmayne is the updater of Bradt's North Cyprus guidebook. He travelled to Cyprus with Sun Express airlines. For more information contact North Cyprus Tourist Centre 020 7631 1930.

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