The Panale Hotel Apartments (Protarus, Cyprus, October 2018)

Hyde · Mar 16, 2020

This was a particularly interesting site.

This site was previously a set of hotel holiday apartments called The Panale Hotel Apartments. The apartments were a Grade B rated set of one bedroom apartments situated in the heart of Protaras just behind the Vrissianna and Sunrise Hotels and 100 meters from the famous Fig Tree Bay sandy beach and crystal clear blue Mediterranean Sea, as well as surrounded by bars, restaurants, shops, supermarkets, banks and a disco. All Apartments of the complex overlooked the panoramic views of the coastline of Protaras and had a direct sea view (There are now hotels blocking the view, but an old photograph I found on the internet shows that at one point in time there were no hotels in front of it).[1] All twenty-two spacious, modern, one bedroom apartments were furnished with a lounge, a well-equipped open plan kitchenette with gas, a bath/shower, a balcony, an air-conditioned bed room, a telephone and a radio. Plus the Lounge area of each apartment could sleep up to two extra persons. [2]

The PANALE (HOTEL APARTMENTS) LIMITED company registered 18th September 1982 [3] and is still listed as an active company to this day despite the apartments being no longer in use.[4] The last known activity was on 18th May 2015 when a “HE4-Notification of change of Officers and of their particulars,” for the Alteration of officers and of their particulars was issued. The Registration Number for this Cyprus Limited Company as held by the Official Government of the Cyprus Registrar Of Companies is HE18218.[5] You can find more information about the company by using the websites listed in the footnotes. [6]

There was a fire in a local bar on the strip called Ghetto Bar in March 2013 [7] that was situated in front of said apartments. The fire spread from the bar (which was made almost entirely of wood) to the apartments behind as well as the shop next door to the bar. The fire damage was extensive and sadly the apartments could not be saved.
There were two buildings on this site but only one of them was accessible, both buildings used to be one building (with the connecting part having been lost to the fire).

In the apartment building I could access, there was still evidence of the 2013 fire and it’s seemingly been abandoned and left to fall apart since then. Ghetto Bar, (which opened in 2006) has since moved further up the strip (re-opening on its new site in 2015), and the space where it was originally was has now become an empty space rented out to a business selling Garra-Ruffa fish foot treatments, and a walk on water bubble –ball experience. Inside the apartments there is minimal graffiti and quite a lot of stuff is still left behind, some of which are original furniture that has been there from when it first opened, including a really cool 80’s headboard with alarm and radio built directly into the wall. A lot of the building has crumbled particularly at the top where there is only a staircase and a small strip of concrete flooring no more than 2ft left, I got an amazing view from up there as well as some great pictures. It had a really cool basement as well, one of the doors to the still dripping old toilets had spider’s cobwebs all over them, it looked like a great setting for a horror film.

The remainder of the site where the rest of the building has gone completely, has become part of a popular wasteland car park that was already next to the site it was situated on, and it’s very common to see both tourists and locales from neighbouring towns and villages use it to park their car in whilst they visit the Fig Tree Bay beach for the day. A local family also appears to live on the site at the very back in a little shack I am unsure if they just live on part of the site, if they own the car park/land or if they rent the space as from what I’ve seen it seems like it’s free to park there.

Whilst I was on the little strip at the top of the site a police car drove past, I nearly shit myself thinking I was going to potentially be arrested in a foreign country, but no they didn’t care they just kept on driving past.

I was lucky when researching for information on the history of the Panale Hotel Apartments I managed to find some old, out of date websites that existed before its unfortunate demise. Most of these still advertise the currency rate for Cyprus as Cypriot pounds. The Cypriot pound was replaced by the euro as official currency of the Republic of Cyprus on 1 January 2008, thus showing the true age of these websites.

I have visited Protarus since my explore in the former Panale Apartments. Not much has changed except part of the car park now has children’s amusement rides on it and they’ve put up netting on part of the site (presumably so any debris doesn’t fall on children’s heads).

It’s funny really I’ve been going on yearly trips to Cyprus since 2008 and I have probably walked past this building a million times, and yet neither me nor my parents could remember it at all before the fire. The only thing we remember is the year it went on fire we remember walking past Ghetto bar and commenting on how it and the apartment behinds were destroyed, weird. Anyway it was a nice easy little explore and the view from the top was well worth it.