New generation of Cypriots seek to end island’s division in Nicosia’s ‘dead zone’
Greeks and Turks who grew up after the 1974 split have found common ground to plan a united future
There are few places more frozen in time than Nicosia’s UN-patrolled buffer zone. And in that space of barbed wire, sandbags and guard posts, there is no place that conjures division more than the Ledra Palace hotel.
What was once a magnet for Hollywood stars, the go-to establishment for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, famed as much for its ballroom as its invention of the brandy sour, has come to symbolise the failure of countless peace envoys, diplomats and politicians to reunite Europe’s last divided capital.