MAP Boutique Hotel

Nicosia keeps its cards close. The last divided capital in Europe is a city of walls and quiet side streets, and it has never gone in for show. Which is exactly why a black, sharply cut building on Stasinou Avenue lands the way it does.

MAP is the work of the Cypriot practice EKKY Studio, and it reads as one confident gesture. A dark, finned facade a few steps from the Venetian walls, then an interior that turns almost entirely monochrome. There are echoes of Bauhaus and Art Deco in the lines, cut through by sudden pink and magenta and by bold contemporary Cypriot art on the walls. Terrazzo runs underfoot. The 34 rooms and suites hold the same discipline: low black beds, cool light, mirrored joinery, Coco-Mat mattresses and the lighting and blinds worked from a screen. It calls itself the island's first smart hotel and does not labour the point.

The table

Downstairs is Scale, a bright counter to all that restraint. Blue velvet banquettes, marble tops, a canopy of hanging greenery and pendant globes, the room does most of its own talking. The kitchen cooks pan-Mediterranean with a Cypriot accent, which in practice means the familiar herbs, grains and grilled vegetables handled with more care than the glamour first suggests. Breakfast here is worth slowing down for.

Why it's in VANE

Most design hotels of this kind sit in a port or on a cliff. This one sits in a working capital that a lot of visitors skip, four minutes from Eleftheria Square and a short walk from the Ledra Street crossing into the northern half of the city. That is the appeal. You stay somewhere genuinely modern, then step out into medieval walls, a covered market and a border you can cross on foot. MAP is small, urban and unashamedly styled, and it gives Nicosia an address it was missing.