Cyprus 🇨🇾

Cyprus is a country in Southern Europe, one of the 10 entries this site files under that subregion. Its full official name is Republic of Cyprus. Government sits in Nicosia.

The population is about 1.4 million, placing it 157th of 249 by population — between Trinidad and Tobago above it and Mauritius below. Among the 10 entries in Southern Europe it ranks 5th by area and 5th by population.

The land area is 9,251 km², which ranks it 170th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Lebanon and just ahead of Puerto Rico. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is around a fifth smaller than Jamaica.

Cyprus has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is Lebanon, roughly 290 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

Being surrounded by water rather than by neighbours pushes a country's relationships outward. Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Syria and Türkiye sit in a different world region from Cyprus yet rank among its closest geographic company — the kind of pairing that only shows up once you stop thinking in continents.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why Cyprus's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 35.0° N, 33.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 3,896 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

China, Japan and South Korea sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It shares no land border with anyone. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, so everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air.

Spread across 9,251 km², that works out at about 147 people per square kilometre, which makes it more crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from Cyprus are called Cypriots.

2 languages carry official status: Greek and Turkish. Greek, the first listed, is shared with 1 other entry worldwide.

Against Europe as a whole it is the 37th most populous of 53 entries, and it accounts for 1.0% of everyone living in Southern Europe.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Cyprus ranks 170th of 249 by area and 157th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.017% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Cyprus in the size ordering are Lebanon at 10,452 km² and Puerto Rico at 8,870 km², against Cyprus's 9,251 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Cyprus averages 147 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 87th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Cyprus does not have the Euro to itself. It is one of 38 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is EUR, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in EUR travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. Greek is listed for 2 entries here, Cyprus among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Euro (€, EUR). Another 37 entries use the same currency — Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Croatia among them — so exchange rates move for reasons that have nothing to do with Cyprus.

The top-level domain is .cy. The international dialling code is +357. Its ISO codes are cy and CYP, which is what most databases and flag files use.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Cyprus, the answer is Nicosia.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

Zoom in from the world to Southern Europe and Cyprus sits 5th of 10 by population and 5th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Greece just above and Malta just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Italy is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Southern Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇬🇷 Greece
• 🇲🇹 Malta
• 🇮🇹 Italy