Buffavento Castle

Buffavento — Old French for "defier of winds" — is the ruin of a Byzantine mountaintop castle perched at roughly 950 metres in the Kyrenia range of northern Cyprus. Originally a Byzantine signal station and refuge, it was expanded under the Crusader Lusignan dynasty and later repurposed as a Venetian prison before being abandoned to the elements. The hike up takes around 30 to 45 minutes along rocky mountain paths, rewarding visitors at the summit with sweeping views across the northern Cypriot coastline and, on clear days, as far as the Turkish shore. Of the three Lusignan mountain castles in Cyprus, Buffavento is the most remote and least developed, giving it a windswept solitude that the other two lack.