Cyprus Rivers

Cyprus has rivers, but not in the sense a northern European would recognise. They run hard after winter rain and are dry stone beds by midsummer, and the island’s whole water strategy is built around catching them before they reach the sea. Hydrographically Cyprus is divided into 70 basins and 380 sub-basins, and over the past decade an average of around 275 million cubic metres a year has flowed into its rivers. This site documents 12 rivers, listed by district further down the page.

The longest

The Gialias is the second largest river in Cyprus at 88 kilometres, running off the Troodos and the Machairas mountains, across the Mesaoria plain and into Famagusta bay. The Serrachis is third at 55 kilometres, dropping off the northern side of the Troodos into Morphou Bay.

In the west, the Xeros — also called the Asprokremmos or Xeropotamos — is the fifth largest at 41.5 kilometres, and the Ezousa the sixth at 41 kilometres. The Kouris, between Erimi and Kantou in the Limassol district, is seventh by length at 38 kilometres but first by the volume of water its basin collects.

Valleys worth driving

The Diarizos valley in the Paphos district is the one to give an afternoon to: a green corridor of villages, orchards and old bridges running up into the hills. The Krios comes off Chionistra in the Troodos and cuts past Pano and Kato Platres, creating a valley with its own distinctive plant and animal life.

Closer to town, the Garyllis has been turned into a linear park running north to south through Limassol — a river as urban infrastructure, and one of the better things to have happened to that city.

Dams and what they changed

Because the flow is seasonal, the island has built extensively to hold on to it: some 108 dams now capture around 70% of the surface flow, with roughly a third of the total still reaching the sea. That has secured the water supply and profoundly altered the rivers, which is worth knowing before setting out to see one in August. For the reservoirs themselves, see Cyprus dams.