Apostolos Kouroupakis
I remember one winter afternoon in 2004, sitting beside the Faneromeni church, I think it was February, eating tangerines I’d bought from an elderly street vendor while waiting for two friends. They were quite late, which gave me plenty of time to watch people coming and going across the church courtyard. On one side stood the imposing Faneromeni Girls’ School, on the other, the busy square in front of the church, and in the middle, the majestic church itself. I tried to absorb the scene, to fix it in my memory, since, back then, I had decided photographs were a waste of time and a kind of forced memory (pointless youthful philosophies).
That was the first image that came to mind after I left the screening of When the Swallows Fall Silent, a documentary by Konstantinos Patsalides and Giorgos Avraam. To me, the film is far more than a stroll through the Faneromeni neighborhood, a tribute to Matthaios’ historic eatery, or a homage to the Faneromeni School. For Nicosians, especially those who studied at Faneromeni or ate at Matthaios’, the two stories at the heart of the documentary carry even greater emotional weight, and perhaps a deeper sense of loss.
The documentary features teacher Solonas Andartis, Pambos Charalambous, then principal of the school, Matthaios of the eponymous restaurant, journalist and author Eleni Xenou as a resident of the old town, and the students of the primary school at the time. Representing the University of Cyprus, which plans to convert the school into a School of Architecture, is the university’s rector, Professor Tasos Christofides.
In every respect, Patsalides and Avraam’s documentary captures not just how different worlds collide, or how merciless time can be, but how a neighborhood is violently transformed, how development is imposed rather than emerging organically. It shows how a model of school integration was dismantled, how a local business was forced to shut down abruptly. What lingers from the film is that violence. The gentrification of the neighborhood wasn’t accidental, it was a decision, a deliberate shift, and it felt like a slap in the face.
Of course, cities change. Nothing stays static. No city can be frozen in time, turned into an untouchable archaeological site. But in Nicosia’s old town, and not only there, things change clumsily, without a central plan, without any coherent vision. They change simply because some have the power to change them, shaping the city for their own benefit. The result is a museum-like version of the city, a place made for visitors and guests. Residents, foreign, local, even extraterrestrial, are being pushed out.
When the Swallows Fall Silent reminded me of something I wrote back in 2022:
“I insist, something doesn’t sit right with this whole story. Because when we talk about turning the Faneromeni area into a university hub, the Old Market square into a center of innovation, and the surrounding neighborhoods into student dorms and cozy apartments for the well-off, what exactly are we aiming for?”
And again, something I had written even earlier, in April 2021:
“It would be wise for the municipal authorities [i.e., those in office at the time] to begin the gentrification of the old city by presenting their urban sustainability studies to the public, so current residents can feel confident they won’t be displaced in the medium to long term. Let the municipal authorities show Nicosians how they imagine the city ten years from now, when the checkpoints open and the needs will be different.”
I still have the same questions. And the old town keeps gentrifying…
This article was translated from its Greek original.
