Dervish Pasha Mansion

The Dervish Pasha Mansion, in Turkish Dervis Pasa Konagi, is a historical mansion and ethnographic museum in the Arab Ahmet quarter of Nicosia, in the northern part of the divided city, on Beligh Pasha Street. It has two floors, the lower built of stone and the upper of adobe, and is considered one of the finest examples of Ottoman architecture in Cyprus. The present house stands on an earlier Gothic building, and the date 1801 is inscribed on its front door, which suggests the year of construction. The ornate wooden ceiling carvings are dated to a repair of 1869. Historically it had two entrances, one for men (selamlik) and one for women (harem), a large inner courtyard for the household, and an upper bay window in the Baghdadi style. By 1979 it was in danger of collapse; the Turkish Cypriot state bought it in 1981, and after renovation it opened as an ethnographic museum on 21 March 1988, the first major renovation project in Northern Cyprus.