North, south and the line that divides

Poor economically, but rich in other ways, North Cyprus - with its beguiling hospitality, spectacular archaeological sites, and beaches that live up to their reputation - ends up charming its guests, even though some are reluctant to visit in the first place

Ever been at the scene of an archaeological crime, and found your camera wouldn't work? Such was my fate in a remote corner of North Cyprus, so I must describe what I saw. The Roman basilica of Soli, in a meadow overlooking the sea, is a maze of mosaics in rare geometric designs, and in colours still fresh. A young man dozing in a hut wakes up just long enough to sell you a ticket, then sinks back from view. A notice tells you not to take anything away. Some of the mosaics have a symbolic fence along one side, but none are properly enclosed. Sheep and goats wander at will.

What I really want to photograph is the floor of a chamber spanning the west end of the building. A six-inch layer of powdery earth and dry grass has in places been scraped away, to reveal a superb zoological mosaic. A dog barking, a rampant boar and a prancing horse are all visible through separate windows in the soil while, through another, a bird is seen holding a worm in its beak.

I assume this last detail, because the bird's head is gone - hard to believe by accident. My guess is that it has now been reassembled on someone's drawing-room wall: it wouldn't have taken 10 minutes to remove. I scratch at random in a virgin piece of soil, and find more tesserae: most of the piece must still be awaiting excavation. An archaeologist's dream - and a looter's prime opportunity. Meanwhile, out of sight, the young man sleeps on.

On the other side of the island, the Graeco-Roman port of Salamis extends for a mile along the shore. Bath-houses, a basilica, an amphitheatre, a temple, and a vast gymnasium are all in place, ruined but still recognisable after depredations by successive waves of conquerors. It has long been known that much of this city still lies under the sand dunes: fine that it should stay there, until money is found for a serious dig. But for now, as at Soli, tourists and sheep are free to walk about on the mosaic floors of the basilica, while the unique wall-mosaics of the gymnasium are open to the winds and the encroachments of vegetation. One large fragment showing Apollo and his weapons has been given a sheltering roof, but nothing else is protected, let alone signed. This casualness has its charms and it is a refreshing change from the suffocating tastefulness of "heritage" art - but it does make the jaw drop.

Priceless beauty in semi-dereliction: the condition of these sites is a perfect reflection of the plight of North Cyprus. Some of the blame must be laid at the door of the civic authorities, who clearly don't give a damn. But as one Turkish Cypriot told me angrily, any EU funds which might be assigned for the proper conservation of Salamis and Soli would have to be channelled through the Greek Cypriot administration and, so long as North and South remain on a cold-war footing, that's unthinkable. Only one country in the world - Turkey - recognises the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus as a legal entity; anyone who wants to trade with it, or travel to it, must do so via the Turkish mainland. Even its international postal address implies that it's a constituent part of Turkey. Until last month's carefully orchestrated riots, the Greek-Cypriot propaganda machine had been succeeding brilliantly in its overriding aim, which is to air- brush Turkish Cyprus out of existence.

Yet those riots only served as a reminder that nothing has changed since the Sixties, and that the rights and wrongs of the case are as finely balanced as ever. The Turkish invasion of 1974 was in response to a Greek- Cypriot coup: with Britain - supposedly a guarantor of the peace - sitting on its hands, Turkey had to move in to prevent mass slaughter. And the deaths at Dherinia were by no means the first to occur on the Green Line, which - for anyone crazy enough to force their way on to it from either side - has always been a dangerous place.

The irony of the situation last month was that, until they heard about it on the international news, most people in North Cyprus had no idea that anything out of the ordinary had happened. The real war is being pursued in the economic sphere: North Cyprus must live by its tourist trade. Last year this did reasonably well, but now it's in a slump and the situation is getting desperate.

But you get no feeling of that in this beguilingly hospitable land. The Turkish Army and UN blue-berets may be ubiquitous, with large tracts of land fenced off for military purposes; the coast may bristle with heroic monuments recalling the 1974 invasion; most village churches may now be mosques; and Ataturk's statue may adorn every tiny square. All this may come as a jolt, but when you remember the alternative - ethnic cleansing along Serbo-Croat lines - it's impossible not to admire the optimism with which this outcast nation is building a future.

Turkish Nicosia, now renamed Lafkosa, is in effect a market town whose turbulent history is marked by the transmogrification of its buildings. The Selimiye Camii is the grandest Gothic mosque in the world; the Buyuk Han is an Ottoman inn which the British turned into a prison; before it became an Ottoman grain store, the Bedesten was a sixth-century Byzantine church. From the restaurant at the top of the tallest building in town - the Saray Hotel, a mere eight storeys - you see the real situation at a glance: a sea of low red roofs washing up against a cliff of gleaming skyscrapers. And where sea meets cliff, there is a thin line of greenery.

This line separating poor Turks from rich Greeks is in places only a few yards wide - no photography - and while you can shout across it, you can't make a phone call. Crossing it involves such complicated official manoeuvres that it's not worth the bother. The best museums may be on the Greek side, but there's much to enjoy among the Turks, notably Kurdish restaurants, a large souk (many shopkeepers speak pure Hackney) and a covered market like a miniature of the one in Istanbul.

Drive east across the Mesarya Plain, past shepherds tending their neatly segregated sheep and goats, and you come to the monastery museum of St Barnabas. This exquisite building used to house a major icon collection until it was looted in 1902. It still has a fine array of bronze age and Crusader pots. You reach the sea at the Venetian port of Famagusta - now Gazimagusa - where Gothic ruins rise like graceful ships above the palm trees, and "Othello's Tower" looks out over the harbour. Beyond lies the Panhandle: several hours drive over rocky terrain till you reach the villages where most of North Cyprus's few remaining Greeks still live and worship.

There are no Greeks left in the mountain village of Bellapais, whose loveable quirkiness Lawrence Durrell chronicled in Bitter Lemons. To read his memoir now is painful; in the space of three years (l953-56) Durrell watched two communities move inexorably from peaceful co-existence to murderous strife. In 1974 the entire village "swapped" - a nice euphemism - with a Turkish village in the south. Though I stayed there for a week, I met nobody who remembered either Durrell or the village as it had been in his day. But his house is still there, bearing a plaque and a sign offering holiday lets, and so is the Tree of Idleness under which all village business was once transacted. The medieval abbey is superb, though pitted within and without by bullet-holes, many of which are ominously at chest-height. "Target-practice by the British Army" is the local explanation for these marks, but I find that hard to believe.

Last summer a forest fire swept for miles along this western coast, leaving several mountains blackened and bare. Armies of Turkish peasants were shipped from the mainland to clear the mess and start reforestation, which is now well under way. For this is an area of crucial importance, these verdant uplands above Kyrenia contain the bulk of the hotel trade.

Last year we stayed at the Olive Tree, one of Asil Nadir's few remaining properties, which is an agglomeration of bungalows built round a swimming pool; it's luxurious but impersonal. This year, on the slopes below Durrell's abbey, we chanced upon perfection in the form of the Bellapais Garden hotel. A family business run by a couple who look after their clientele with affectionate care, this too consists of bungalows, but with no frills and a blissful absence of ambient music. All you hear, as you glide up and down the pool, is the sound of cicadas. The surrounding vegetation is tropical - bananas, dates, oranges, limes, and pomegranates in profusion - while melons and marrows ripen underfoot. Even the muezzins here have homespun charm, answering each other like wavering cocks at dawn, chanting the dying light at dusk.

Below in Kyrenia, the Venetian harbour still functions as a base for fishermen and boatbuilders: mass tourism has not yet arrived. The ramparts house a museum containing the oldest boat ever resurrected from the sea- bed with its cargo intact (including 9,000 well-preserved almonds). What strikes you, as you compare it with the new ones stirring at anchor, is how little the design has changed during the intervening 2,300 years. Behind the ramparts we came upon a neat stone church with an arresting noticeboard: "The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East: Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf: St Andrews Kyrenia. All denominations welcome." Cats were sleeping in the shade of the porch, out of which came a theme from the Phantom of the Opera spookily played on an organ. All denominations indeed.

The food in North Cyprus is lavish and cheap, and the beaches live up to their fabulous reputation. One day, on a schooner called the Soli Queen, we took a cruise from Kyrenia to Turtle Bay, where each July those amiable reptiles scramble up the beach to lay their eggs. If this was, for us, the acme of marine contentment, our serenest aerial moment was surveying the view from the Persian palace at Vouni. Another unsigned ruin which we found with the help of locals; another dozing youth, but here guarding nothing worth a looter's notice. Just chiselled stones, sea and sky, the cooling zephyr blowing, and a vast, lovely silence.

At my camera shop in London, I learned one more thing about North Cyprus. My Canon was fine: it had just rejected the Kodak film I'd put into it. It wasn't Kodak, but a repackaged, notoriously faulty East German brand. I'd bought it in a shop in Bellapais, and I'm sure it was sold in good faith. Caveat emptor.

TRAVEL NOTES

GETTING THERE: Flights to North Cyprus from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Manchester, arrive at Ercan Airport near Nicosia. All flights include a 45-minute stopover in Turkey, though usually you don't need to leave the aircraft. The national carrier for North Cyprus is Cyprus Turkish Airlines: flight only, pounds 245 from April to mid-July, and mid-August to October; pounds 294 for peak season. Call the Northern Cyprus Tourist Office (0171 631 1930) for further information. Cyprus Paradise (0181 343 8888) offers restricted tickets at pounds 199 return.

FERRIES: There are daily ferry services between Mersin in Turkey and Kyrenia. During the summer additional services operate between Northern Cyprus (Kyrenia or Famagusta - now Gazimagusa) and Turkey (Tashucu, Alanya, Mersin and Antalya).

STAYING THERE: Bellapais Garden Hotel seven-nights accommodation, plus flight, from pounds 509. Olive Tree Hotel has 14-nights accommodation from pounds 599, including flight. Both are available from Cyprus Paradise Travel Company, 689 High Road, London N12 ODA, tel 0181 343 8888. During the summer season, you should make an early booking for your flight and hotel. Bed and breakfast accommodation and bungalows are usually available alongside or near large tourist hotels. There are some camp sites, but they tend to be without facilities.

FURTHER INFORMATION: UK citizens do not require a visa. It is important to let the passport control in North Cyprus give you a stamped sheet of paper, rather than stamping the passport itself: Greek Cypriot border posts view the stamp with disfavour. The local currency is the Turkish Lira. Travellers cheques are acceptable; as are credit cards in larger hotels, restaurants and shops.