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Maa Paliokastro
Coral Bay is increasingly popular with tourists; swimming is safe and it's gradually becoming more and more built-up (like everywhere around Pafos). There's a little strip which is Pafos-in-miniature (estate agent/bar/souvenir shop/bar/restaurant/estate agent etc etc) and an increasing number of hotels/apartments/villas.
But I didn't go there to see any of that. One the north-westerly headland (or the south-westerly, if you stay on bus 15 till it terminates at the Coralia Beach Hotel) there's a Bronze age settlement.
Maa Paliokastro has been partially excavated, and is now fully fenced-off. Surrounded on three sides by sea and cliffs, it was an ideal spot to put an easily-defensible settlement, especially if substantial walls were built around it (and they were).
People lived there during the Copper Age, in rock cavities with wooden superstructures, but Aegean settlers arrived around 1200BC. The settlement seems to have been quite prosperous, with some large houses excavated and evidence of metal-working. It's entirely possible that bronze ingots were exported from the site. The settlement was destroyed in 1185BC (probably by pirates), rebuilt and finally abandoned around 1150BC.
The most amazing thing about the site, I thought, was the huge amount of large pot sherds just lying around everywhere. I'm not used to see big chunks of prehistric pottery underfoot!
There's a little museum too, built half-underground in the style of a Greek tholos tomb.
It's worth finding your way here, especially if you have the site to yourself (as I did). Fantastic views, silence apart from the birds and the sea; really atmospheric and evocative of past times.
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