Kyrenia or Girne – Bellapais and Karmi beckon

Kyrenia, in Turkish called Girne, is a port city with more than 33,000 inhabitants in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
In the 10th to 9th centuries BC Chr. Keryneia became one of the nine city kingdoms in Cyprus. At that time the independent Keryneia was under the rule of an unnamed dynast who stood on the side of Antigonus I Monophthalmos against Ptolemy I in the Third Diadoch War. However, Seleucus I, an ally of Ptolemy, conquered the city in in 315 BC.
In 312 BC the dynastic system in Keryneia was dissolved by Ptolemy and the city and its territory were placed under the control of the Salamian king Nicocreon, a former comrade-in-arms of Alexander the Great before Tire and allies of Ptolemy.
The city received an aqueduct, possibly under the Roman emperor Claudius; the city is also mentioned in an inscription from the Flavian period. It is not certain whether it was civitas.
The city became known to archaeologists and ancient historians through the Kyrenia ship, which is to be seen in the city's Shipwreck Museum. The almost 15 m long ship sank by 300 BC.Under the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, the castle was expanded as much as St. Hilarion and Kantara on the Karpas, because there was a fear in Constantinople that the island would be invaded by the Seljuks, who had already conquered large parts of Asia Minor.