Saturday

5) 11 A.M. Higher Learning

Multiple daily buses (5 euros) make the roughly 100-minute journey to Nicosia, whose main bus station is just outside the historical walled city center. Within, the 11th-floor observatory of the Shacolas Tower (2.50 euros) provides an overview, in every sense, of the divided city. Films, photographs and touch-screen displays delve into Nicosia history and architecture — including the periods of Crusader, Venetian, Ottoman and British control — while large windows reveal the contemporary metropolis. Look south to see postmodern Nicosia, including Eleftheria Square (undergoing a futuristic renovation devised by the late architect Zaha Hadid) and the pockmarked white Tower 25 (by the French architect Jean Nouvel). Look north to see the minarets and markets of the Turkish-occupied side.



6) Noon. Turf and Turf

Meat with a side of meat? You’ll be converted when you order the mixed pork kebab at Evroulla’s Restaurant, a no-frills haven of rustic cooking in a covered passage off lively Lidras Street. Prepared by a husband-and-wife team, the daily menu might offer lemon chicken with orzo, meatballs with oven-baked potatoes or a succulent, fatty pork chop with delectably greasy fries. But carnivores shouldn’t miss the kebab, which pairs crispy-tender cubes of pig meat alongside sieftalies, minced pork wrapped in chargrilled stomach membrane. They’re crackly, plump and juicy in a single bite. Lunch for two costs about 30 euros.

7) 1:30 P.M. Vintage shopping

Thanks to improving cross-border relations, traveling from the Republic of Cyprus into the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (officially recognized only by Turkey) became much simpler in 2015. After a passport check at the Lidras Street checkpoint, you find yourself amid a maze of pedestrian streets packed with stone buildings, small cafes, cheap clothing stores and — if you know where to look — wonderful vintage shops. Among the arcaded passageways and trinket sellers of the 16th-centry caravan hotel known as Buyuk Han, the musty shop of Ali Yapicioglu welcomes with used books, artwork, coins and stamps. Nearby, in the covered Belediye Pazari (municipal market), Redesign Antique sells decades-old albums, turntables, radios and televisions. Alongside the market, where a design-shop scene is emerging, Hippo sells well-chosen retro goods from gas masks to comic books.

Bartenders at Lost and Found Drinkery in Nicosia. Credit Danielle Villasana for The New York Times



8) 4 P.M. Parisian Pleasures

A. G. Leventis Gallery, a modernist multilevel exhibition space that opened in 2014, is filled with world-class European paintings. Cypriot and Greek artists abound, but the crowd-pleaser is the Paris Collection, so named because the works once hung in the Paris apartment of the late Mr. Leventis, a Cypriot business magnate. In addition to a recreation of his opulent living room, the galleries showcase detailed 18th-century Venetian scenes by Canaletto, the darkly mysterious “St. Francis in Ecstasy” (late 1500s) by El Greco, the shimmering color bricks of Paul Signac’s “The Barge at Samois” (1901), the hallucinatory folk art of Chagall’s “Engaged Couple With Bouquet” (1954-63) as well as works by Renoir, Monet and other heavyweights. Entry, 5 euros.



9) 8 P.M. Get Pumped

Part concept store, part cocktail lounge and part neo-Mediterranean restaurant, Thegym lets you exercise multiple pleasures under one double-height roof. Amid old stone walls and new industrial details, you can start your workout with appetizers like portobello mushroom in Commandaria wine glaze or finely chopped sea bass tartare with minutely diced cucumber and tomato: a pixelated pile of sea and earth. The routine continues with mains ranging from a thick slab of skin-on croaker with tabbouleh to a stringy-soft pork neck (cooked for 24 hours) in a sweet-sour wine reduction. Pump up further with yogurt panna cotta or tiramisù and towel off. A three-course dinner for two, without drinks, costs around 70 euros.

10) 10 P.M. Nic at Night

Nocturnal Nicosia is awash in bars. Shaded by fruit trees, the outdoor barrels-turned-tables of Silver Star attract a well-dressed crowd keen to soak up electro beats and some two dozen wines by the glass. (Tip: The Zambartas winery’s take on Xynisteri — a native Cypriot white grape — is a complex, full-bodied wine with hints of melon, honey and green apple.) For cocktails, track down Lost and Found Drinkery, a time-warp fun house with throwback pinball machines, uprooted cinema seats, oil-drum tables and bowtied bartenders serving martinis, Sezeracs (bourbon, brandy, anise bitters; 7.50 euros) and other concoctions.