The limits of the Turkish military advance in 1974 continue to segregate the island and Nicosia today: Greek Cypriots in the south and Turkish Cypriots in the north, both with Nicosia as their capital. The Buffer Zone, within Nicosia, was the hardening of a much older line in the heart of the city that was once a common ground between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities that developed into a frontier during the second half of the 20th Century. Streets that abut the Buffer Zone come to dead-ends against concrete walls, barbed-wire fences, sand-bags and military observation points, forming a ‘no-man’s land’ that stretches across the entire island.
