Ask people who have lived in Cyprus for decades where the "old island" went, and a lot of them will point north-west. Polis Chrysochous, usually just Polis, sits on Chrysochou Bay where the road from Paphos finally runs out of resorts. It is a proper working town of a couple of thousand people, with a leafy square, a small archaeological museum, and a beach fringed by eucalyptus rather than hotels. Nothing about it is trying to impress you, which is precisely why it does.
The town's history is longer than it looks. Ancient Marion stood here, a city-kingdom that grew rich on copper before Ptolemy flattened it and rebuilt it as Arsinoe. The museum on the edge of the centre holds the finds, and it is the right size: half an hour, genuinely interesting, no queue.
The bay, the baths, the peninsula
What you actually come for is the setting. Polis sits at the gateway to the Akamas Peninsula, the wild, protected thumb of land that juts out at the island's north-west corner. Ten minutes along the coast, past Latchi's fish harbour, the road ends near the Baths of Aphrodite, a fern-draped grotto where the goddess supposedly bathed. The pool itself is small and you cannot swim in it, but the walking trails that start there, the Aphrodite and Adonis circuits, are among the best on the island: high paths over a coastline with no buildings on it at all.
The town beach is a long, half-empty stretch of sand and pebble backed by a shady eucalyptus grove, with a campsite in the trees that has been a fixture for generations of Cypriot families. Swim, eat at the beach restaurant, repeat. East of town, the beaches run for miles towards Pomos with barely a sunbed between them.
Eating and idling
Evenings revolve around the square, where tavernas and cafe tables spill across the cobbles under the trees. The seafood comes up the road from Latchi, the halloumi and village dishes come from the hills behind, and nobody is in any hurry, including the waiters. That is not a complaint. You adjust to Polis time within about a day, and readjusting to normal time afterwards is the hard part.
Polis works as a base, not just a day trip. Use it for the Akamas, Latchi boat trips to the Blue Lagoon, the Baths of Aphrodite trails and lazy beach days, and you will spend a week without once standing in a queue. There are not many corners of coastal Cyprus you can still say that about. Go before everybody else remembers it exists.
