Cyprus, the third-largest island of the Mediterranean, lies in the far east of the sea, south of Anatolia and west of the Levant, and has been settled since hunter-gatherers camped at Aetokremnos on the Akrotiri peninsula about 12,500 years ago. Neolithic villagers raised the round houses of Khirokitia and buried a cat beside a person at Shillourokambos, Chalcolithic carvers shaped the cruciform figurines of picrolite, and in the Bronze Age the copper of the Troodos made the island, known to Egyptians and Hittites as Alashiya, the main supplier of the eastern Mediterranean. After the collapse of that world Greeks and Phoenicians founded city-kingdoms such as Salamis, Paphos, Kourion and Kition, which paid tribute to Assyria, Egypt and Persia until Alexander the Great and then Ptolemy I swept the kingdoms away and joined the island to Ptolemaic Egypt.

In 58 BCE Rome annexed Cyprus, and Paul and Barnabas preached at Salamis and Paphos. Earthquakes ruined the ancient cities, the Church of Cyprus won its independence at Ephesus in 431, and the island passed to Byzantium, then, from 688 to 965, was shared between the empire and the caliphate in a unique condominium. Isaac Komnenos made himself emperor of Cyprus in 1184, and Richard the Lionheart overthrew him in 1191 on his way to the Third Crusade, sold the island to the Templars, and saw it pass to Guy of Lusignan. For three centuries the Lusignan kings ruled a Latin kingdom of Gothic cathedrals, Famagusta merchants and Orthodox peasants, until Genoa seized Famagusta in 1373, the Mamluks defeated and captured King Janus in 1426, and Queen Catherine Cornaro ceded the island to Venice in 1489.

Venice rebuilt Famagusta and Nicosia as fortresses, but an Ottoman army landed in July 1570, took Nicosia in September and Famagusta in August 1571, and the island became an Ottoman eyalet, settled by Anatolian Turks, whose descendants are the Turkish Cypriots. The Orthodox Church was restored, and its archbishop became the ethnarch of the Greek Orthodox community, executed with the bishops in 1821 when Greece rose in revolt. By the Cyprus Convention of 1878 Britain took over the administration of the island, annexed it in 1914 and made it a crown colony in 1925. Greek Cypriots demanded enosis, union with Greece, while Turkish Cypriots, and Turkey, later demanded partition; the revolt of 1931, the EOKA campaign of 1955–1959 under Georgios Grivas and Archbishop Makarios, and the Zurich and London agreements led to independence on 16 August 1960, with Britain keeping the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

The Republic, with a Greek Cypriot President and a Turkish Cypriot Vice-President, broke down in the intercommunal violence of 1963–1964, and a United Nations force has patrolled the island since 1964. On 15 July 1974 the Greek-led National Guard overthrew Makarios, and on 20 July Turkish forces landed, an intervention that Turkey calls a peace operation under the Treaty of Guarantee and that Greek Cypriots and most international bodies call an invasion. By differing estimates 160,000–200,000 Greek Cypriots and 40,000–60,000 Turkish Cypriots fled or were displaced, and the island has been divided ever since by a United Nations buffer zone. In 1983 the Turkish Cypriot administration in the north declared the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Turkey and declared legally invalid by United Nations Security Council Resolution 541. The Annan Plan was rejected by Greek Cypriots in the referendums of 2004, and the Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 and adopted the euro in 2008, and held the presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2012 and 2026. Explore the eleven ages below through selected events from the timeline.