Alona is situated on the Troodos mountain range, between the peaks of Madari and Papoutsa. It is part of the Nicosia province and the Pitsilia area. The highest villages in Cyprus are taken for granted because their average elevation is close to 1200m.
Many documents and manuscripts from the early Frankish period name it as one of the villages belonging to the monarch who collected all the taxes and received all the benefits, according to the protocol of the time. A reference to a devastating hailstorm around the 12th or 13th century that killed 1-2 persons of the village can be found in an old Code of the Monastery of Arakas that was examined and published by a professor of the University of Ioannina. In a Swiss library manuscript, the name Hatzimichalis or something like to that is mentioned, who was a kind of local judge in the early 13th century. According to numerous written sources, the village possessed, among other things, the botanical garden of the courtyard during the Frankish time, and many medicinal and fragrant plants were planted there.
In truth, one of the rarest trees whose leaves and fruits were used as tea, the Souroupia or Souvkia – an obscure scientific term that was not discovered in dictionaries and encyclopaedias – gave the toponym to a place just above the hamlet, “Souvkias” ”, where one of the related trees can still be found. It also appears that the tragouri, a delicious aromatic vegetable famed in Alona and one of the necessities carried by the Agotians in Nicosia and sold for 100 years ago, was a vestige of that time.
At the time, or perhaps before, a highly fragrant rose began to be planted in our area, from which they distilled superb rose water using the age-old process of distillation in a pot, for which Alona was famed. This rose, which was abundant in the Kamini area, was displaced from the one we know in the middle of the twentieth century. For decades, it was vigorously cultivated in our village, and the blossoms were a source of money for the locals.
No one knows for certain when the village was founded. In any case, it is beyond doubt that people lived in the area during the Hellenistic and early Christian periods, and there was a large settlement in what is now known as Dipotamia, at the confluence of the streams of Polystipos and Alonas, where many ancient objects were discovered from time to time. Of course, people of the village would go up our own valley and erect their enclosure and hut where there was plenty of water. Shepherds would also bring their flocks up to our highlands to feed on the ridges. On several of our summits, there are still rough slab stones formed of dry stones and coated in moss that were most likely improvised altars where the shepherds of the time sacrificed their livelihood to appease the gods. Some Ptolemaic coins were also discovered in the lower neighbourhoods on occasion, although no one knows for definite where they came from. Some fairy tale-like traditions related by our great-grandfathers include golden tripods and other copper or gold vessels they saw in Lestis and other regions that were destroyed.