It is a scene frozen in time, hotels left half-built, cranes rusting where they were abandoned more than two decades ago when tens of thousands fled an invading army.
The beaches of Varosha, just outside the ancient city of Famagusta, once drew hordes of sun-worshippers from northern Europe. But they have been deserted since July 1974 when Turkey attacked Cyprus.
And today Varosha is a ghost town, its hotels crumbling and infested with rats, out of bounds to all but a few members of the occupying Turkish military.
The Berlin Wall has been dismantled, the Soviet Union has collapsed, but Cyprus remains a divided country, Turkish troops in a face-off with Greek Cypriot soldiers at either side of the United Nations-controlled Green Line buffer zone that stretches for 180 kilometres coast to coast.
The Green Line may be imaginary, but the guns are not. For its size, Cyprus is one of the most heavily militarised areas in the world. For apart from the Greek Cypriot, Turkish and UN troops, south of the Green Line there are two British bases.
Since the partition of the island, the population of southern Cyprus has exploded with the influx of Greek Cypriot refugees from the north, and an economic miracle has taken place.
The beaches of Larnaca, Limassol and Paphos attract hundreds of thousands of package tourists during the long, hot summers, the bars, discos and striptease joints a far cry from the tensions in the divided capital, Nicosia.