Two small specialist museums in Cyprus sit in different cities, about 85 km apart by road. One shows how medicines were made on the island, in the old Carob Mill complex behind Limassol Castle; the other is a Saturday museum of fairy tales for families, near Paphos Gate in old Nicosia. Each fits into a day you might spend in that old town anyway: the first is next door to the castle, the second a few minutes' walk from Ledra Street.
The Takis Pattichis Museum of Industrial Pharmacy, Limassol
The museum was inaugurated on 29 April 2022 by Nicos Anastasiades, then President, and is a cultural contribution of the Charalambos & Elena Pattihis Foundation, which the family set up in 2020. It is named after Takis Pattichis (1927 to 2016), born in Kato Drys, who studied chemical engineering in Scotland and came home in 1960 to set up a carbon dioxide plant. His company moved on to aerosols and cosmetics, then to medicines for human use in the 1970s, and in 1980 he founded Remedica to make them; the company says it now exports to more than 140 countries. The museum says he is often remembered as the 'father' of the island's pharmaceutical industry, and Visit Cyprus calls it the only museum of its kind in Cyprus "and probably in the whole world".
Most of the exhibits came from his own factories and span the 1960s to the late 2010s. The production machinery includes a 1967 Giusty cream mixer designed with Pattichis's own input, a 1983 Zanasi capsule-filling machine, a 1980 Gallo coating pan used for both sugar and film coating, granulators and a single-punch tablet press, and, since 2024, a semi-automatic suppository line. The laboratory section has a 1960 Olympus microscope, a 1970 Pye Unicam gas chromatograph and the remains of a 1985 Knauer HPLC, believed to be the first of its type brought to Cyprus. The balances run from a 1900 double-pan balance to a 1990 electronic scale, and the books include the Journal of the Chemical Society from 1895. The main exhibits are labelled in Greek and English, with QR codes that open a page on each one.
The museum is on the pedestrian stretch of Vasilissis Street directly behind the castle, about three minutes' walk round from the castle entrance, and the Carob Mill buildings next to it have cafés and public toilets. It opens Tuesday to Saturday from 09:30 to 18:00 and on Sundays from 09:30 (its website gives Sunday closing as 17:30 on most pages and 18:00 on one). It is closed on Mondays and public holidays, so also on Wednesday 28 October, and entry is free. There are no stairs in the display area, so it suits pushchairs and wheelchairs, and children under 12 should come with an adult. The museum runs educational tours for schools and universities; [email protected] is the address to ask. EMEL buses 30, 32, 33 and 64 stop at Agias Theklis (Old Port), a short walk away, and a paper single ticket goes up from €2.00 to €2.50 on 5 November 2026.
Next door, Limassol Castle houses the Cyprus Medieval Museum, open Monday to Friday 09:00 to 17:00 and at weekends 10:00 to 17:00, for €4.50. It is not wheelchair accessible, it also closes on 28 October, and according to the Cyprus Mail a bicommunal crochet installation, A Thousand Hands, A Thousand Stories: Common Ground, is on show there until the end of 2026.
The Fairytale Museum, Nicosia
The Fairytale Museum opened on 23 February 2017. Its founders are Vicky Balomenou, director of the Systemic Family Institute of Cyprus, and her husband Fotis Kakoyiannis, and it runs as a non-profit. It occupies a listed old building at Granikou 32-34, in the Paphos Gate area of the walled city, and it sets out to preserve fairy tales, legends, myths and traditions from Cyprus and Greece while showing how stories travel between cultures. In 2018 the museum and two partners had the folk tales of Cyprus added to the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage kept by the Cyprus National Commission for UNESCO.
Inside, everything is built around the idea of a magic library: three-metre books that hide doors, tiny doors and cupboards for visitors to open, flying books, and hidden passages into rooms where Alice waits at a tea table to help you make up your own story and a witch offers her magic paintbrushes. There are rare books and artworks inspired by fairy tales, and all the information is in Greek and English. The museum also holds storytelling sessions, themed exhibitions and educational programmes for families and schools.
It opens to the public on Saturdays only, from 10:00 to 14:00, for €5, with no booking needed, and it is closed on public holidays. On Saturdays, families with children aged four and over get a free basket for a self-guided trail, in Greek or English. Guided group tours cost €10 a head by booking on +357 22 376522, school visits run on weekdays at 09:00 and 11:00 for up to 25 children, and birthday parties for up to 13 children cost €250. The museum's website has not been updated since early 2024, so ring before you go. It is a three or four minute walk in from Paphos Gate and about seven minutes from Eleftheria Square, and the municipal Tripolis car park, with 352 spaces, is about six minutes away on foot.
Together they make a good Saturday: the Fairytale Museum closes at 14:00, and the pharmacy museum stays open until 18:00, about an hour and a quarter away down the A1 motorway. If you are weighing up a move rather than a weekend, our relocation help can take the paperwork off your hands.
