ABSTRACT
In religious architecture and its intersection with ritual, provision was made for side altars in apses and wall niches in some of the most important Greek and Syrian churches of both Nicosia and Famagusta. This chapter reviews current research and offers some further thoughts regarding the universality and malleability of the Gothic style as the primary language of monumental urban religious architecture in the complex social, religious, and cultural space of the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean. Reformers such as Martin Luther and Jean Calvin did not develop a clear blueprint for Protestant religious architecture, the latter emphasising that the term "church" should not be applied to physical structures but instead to the body of the faithful. The chapter concentrates on the architecture of the Greek metropolitan churches still extant in the two principal towns of late medieval and early modern Cyprus, Nicosia and Famagusta.
