A New Project in Progress: Residence as Self-Presentation of Urban Elites. Architecture and Decoration of the House of Orpheus in Nea Paphos, the Ancient Capital of Cyprus. 1 Potentials and Prospects

Abstract

The so-called House of Orpheus, explored under the direction of Demetrios Michaelides a few decades ago, has so far been studied only fragmentarily. Since 2018, a new project began whose objective is to complete the studies on the site. To this end, non-invasive fieldworks (at Nea Paphos) are currently performed as well as library and archival research focused on gathering all published and unpublished information on the House. The results of the new documentation made on the site, supplemented with archival data, will enable a virtual, three-dimensional reconstruction of selected architectural units. The collected material will serve to re-define the house’s spaces from a historical perspective. The comprehensive evaluation of the architecture of the House of Orpheus will become an important point of reference in studies on the residential architecture of ancient Cyprus and other regions of the eastern Mediterranean.