Kouris Dam

The Kouris Dam is the largest reservoir in Cyprus and the centrepiece of the island's water network. Completed in 1988 on the Kouris river west of Limassol, its clay-cored earthfill embankment rises 110 metres — the tallest dam in Cyprus — and impounds 115 MCM (million cubic metres), roughly a third of the storage capacity of all the island's dams combined.

The reservoir gathers three rivers — the Kouris, Limnatis and Kryos — and is topped up with water diverted from the Diarizos river through a 14.5 km tunnel that runs via the Arminou dam. From Kouris, the Southern Conveyor pipeline carries water eastward across the island, feeding treatment plants and irrigation networks as far as Larnaca and the Famagusta district, which makes the dam the primary source of potable and irrigation water for southern Cyprus.

Building the dam meant submerging the old village of Alassa, whose residents were relocated to higher ground. The village's early-20th-century Church of St Nicholas went under with it, and in dry years, as the water recedes, the church tower re-emerges above the surface — one of the island's most striking reminders of how much its landscape has been reshaped in the pursuit of water.