borders of this village, though the expansion of the Limassol tourist area has threatened the ruins: it is speculated that some of the hotels are on top of the Amathus necropolis. The site and archaeology The city had vanished, except for fragments of wall and of a great stone urn on the acropolis, dating from the 6th century BC of which a similar vessel was taken to the Musée du Louvre in 1867. It is tall and weighs 14 tons. It was made from a single piece of stone and has four curved handles carved with bulls. In the 1870s, Luigi Palma di Cesnola excavated the necropolis of Amathus, as elsewhere in Cyprus, enriching the early collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; some objects went to the British Museum. More modern archaeological joint Cypriote-French excavations started in 1980 and still continue. The Acropolis, the Temple of Aphrodite, the agora, the city's walls, the basilica and the port have all been excavated. Further archaeological objects found during the excavations are preserved at both the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia and the Limassol District Archaeological Museum. In the agora there are marble columns decorated with spirals and a huge paved squares. On the coastal side of the city there is an Early Christian basilica with mosaic floors decorated with semi-precious stones. Further, near the terraced road leading to the Temple, situated on the top of the cliff, several houses built in a row dating to the Hellenistic period have been discovered. At the east and west extremes of the city the two acropoleis are situated where a number of tombs have been found, many of which are intact. Two small sanctuaries, with terracotta votive offerings of Graeco-Phoenician age, lie not far off, but the location of the great shrines of Adonis and Aphrodite have not been identified (M. Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, i. ch.1). Gallery Notes References Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopaedia of Classical Sites, 1976: "Amathous, Cyprus" Municipality of Limassol External links http://www.mcw.gov.cy/mcw/DA/DA.nsf/0/D20ED526826AB796C225719B00374A92?OpenDocument Agias Tychonas: Amathus (English) http://www.anastasiosofsinai.org/index.html (English) StoryMap about Amathous (A. Cannavò, A. Rabot) Cities in ancient Cyprus Archaeological sites in Cyprus Former populated places in Cyprus