FAMAGUSTA, called Gazimağusa by the Turks, is the second-largest city in north Cyprus and the main port. It was founded in 300 B. C. by Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s successors, and settled by refugees from Salamis, but remained an obscure village until Richard I offered the area to Guy de Lusignan as a refuge for dispossessed Christians after the fall of Acre in the Holy Land to the Saracens 1291. Under the Lusignans the town grew rapidly, becoming one of the wealthiest cities on earth, with 365 churches, and became a byword for worldliness and luxury until lost to the Genoese in 1372. It was seized by Venice in 1489. The architecture reflects the glories of the Lusignan period, while the fortifications display Venetian engineering at its most impressive. It was taken by the Turks in 1571-Gazimağusa means “unconquered Mağusa”-in an impressive siege from which the city never recovered, and has been referred to as “one of the most remarkable ruins in the world” with its crumbling structures. Further damage to the city was inflicted by the British in the middle of the last century, when they removed vast quantities of stone to build the quays at Port Said and the Suez Canal, and when it was heavily shelled by the Germans in World War II. Famagusta is thought to be the setting of Acts II to V of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Most of the population live in the suburbs outside the old walls of the city. Agatha was at first dismayed to find out how large and sprawling the place was, but decided to go to the old historic centre, where James Lacey might possibly have been heading to do a bit of sightseeing. She parked the car in a side street outside the city walls and walked on foot to what looked like a main gate. The heat when she left Kyrenia had been bad, but this heat in Famagusta was appalling. She remembered that the English tourists she had met at The Grapevine had said they were going to Othello’s Tower.