Heinrich Schoeller first came to Pissouri Bay in 1970, drawn by its rugged headland and its empty beaches. In 1990 the first Columbia hotel on the coast opened there, on the south shore of Cyprus between Limassol and Paphos, and Columbia Beach Resort now climbs the hillside above the bay. In its grounds stands a small stone chapel that Schoeller had built and then asked the painter John Corbidge to decorate. Corbidge covered every surface inside, walls, vaults and dome, with saints and angels on a ground of deep blue. All Saints Chapel is where couples marry at the resort, and it is small: it takes ten guests inside and up to 45 outside.
A shipowner’s resort on Pissouri Bay
Schoeller founded Columbia Shipmanagement, whose offices are in Limassol, and the resort belongs to the hospitality side of Schoeller Holdings, beside its shipping and aviation companies. Columbia Hotels & Resorts was set up in the late 1980s. Columbia Beach Hotel opened on the bay in 1990, Columbia Beach Resort followed in 2005, and a renovation completed in 2017 reintroduced the whole place across 75,000 square metres of gardens. It has since joined Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
The resort was designed to resemble a traditional Cypriot village. Its buildings are low, finished with stone and wood, arches and tiled roofs, and they step down the hillside towards the sea and the white cliffs of Cape Aspro, the headland that closes the bay. The bay runs for two kilometres and holds Blue Flag status. Pissouri village, about 30 kilometres west of Limassol, sits on a green hill some three kilometres from the shore; its name most likely comes from the resin once tapped from the pine trees around it, pissa in Greek.
John Corbidge and All Saints Chapel
Schoeller conceived the chapel as a homage to the early Christian and medieval churches of Cyprus, with traditional stone walls, a hemispherical dome and a miniature bell tower. Once the building was finished he asked Corbidge to paint it, choosing him, he said, for the clarity of his line and his ability to record historical and religious references accurately.
Corbidge was born in Sheffield in 1935 and studied at the art college there. He settled in Athens in 1965, where he designed theatre sets, returned to Cyprus in 1968 with a one man show at the Hilton in Nicosia, and made the island his home in 1969. The Turkish invasion of 1974 cost him his house and studio, and his series Bitter Sun took the island’s tragedy as its subject. He later lived in the village of Lania, painted a series of portraits of elderly Cypriots, and died in November 2003. His work in the chapel remains.
The figures inside share their features with Byzantine iconography: saints, angels, the Virgin Mary and Christ. The drawing, though, is loose and freehand, and the figures float on lighter and darker blues across walls and ceiling. Schoeller likened them to divers in the water of the bay a few metres away. Wooden chairs with woven seats face a carved wooden icon screen across a patterned tiled floor.
Vows for ten, or for 45 outside
With ten seats inside, a larger ceremony at All Saints takes place outside the chapel, for up to 45 guests. For a Christian Orthodox wedding the resort puts the couple in touch with the local priest; for a civil wedding it secures the time and date from the municipality. The officiant’s fee, like that of every outside supplier, is paid by the couple directly. The resort’s events executive draws up the itinerary and runs the day, and couples may bring their own photographer, florist or musicians, who work to the resort’s policies and under its supervision.
From the chapel to the table
What follows the vows depends on which of the chapel’s two numbers a couple choose. Ten guests fit easily into the Apollo Tavern Pergola, a garden pergola beside the resort’s Cypriot and Greek tavern, which takes 25 for a wedding breakfast with the gardens and the sea in view. The Ouzeri Bar, a stone arched room with tiled floors where ouzo and the local spirit zivania are poured, takes 30 for drinks or a seated meal. Either keeps the meal at the scale the chapel set.
At 45 the party outgrows both, and the natural next step is the Cape Aspro Pergola, open to the air above Pissouri Bay, which takes 130 for dinner receptions, grilled barbecue buffets among them. Beyond it the resort has larger rooms, up to a ballroom for 250, but they belong to a bigger wedding than the one the chapel sets. Each space is hired by the day, and the fee covers its set up, from tables and chairs to linen and glassware.
The hour matters as much as the room. Outdoors the music stops at eleven at night; indoors it may run until half past two, so a wedding that wants to dance late moves inside after dinner.
Every dish and drink comes from the resort, and the cake from its own Columbia Confectionery. Set and buffet menus start at €80 a person including service and taxes, cocktail receptions at €22 a person and drinks packages for dinner at €30. A tasting follows once the menu is confirmed and the deposit paid, with a selection of dishes and canapés from the chosen menu proposed by the chef according to the season.
Suites on the hillside
All 169 rooms are suites, and family and friends can be placed together, availability allowing. Junior Suites look over the sea or the infinity pool, and Family Suites sit in the east and west wings. The Cape Suites are corner rooms with two balconies over the bay and the Cape Aspro cliff; the Eagle’s Nest Suites, few in number, stand on the hillside above the west entrance, some with a private pool or a plunge pool. Resident guests use Hébe Spa, named after the Greek goddess of youth, without charge, and its indoor pool is heated in winter.
Between Kourion and Aphrodite’s Rock
The coast either side of the bay fills a free day before or after the wedding. Coastal trails of up to ten kilometres start from Pissouri Square, with sea views along the way. Fifteen minutes towards Limassol, near Episkopi, are the ruins of Kourion, the ancient city-state on a limestone promontory above Episkopi Bay where Greek settlers from Argos arrived in the twelfth century BC; its theatre was enlarged under Trajan to the size it keeps today, and the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates lies to the west of the acropolis. Ten minutes’ drive the other way is Petra tou Romiou, the sea stack linked with the birth of Aphrodite; its name, Rock of the Greek, belongs to a legend in which the hero Digenes hurled it at Saracen raiders. The resort runs RIB trips out to it, and to Melanda Bay.
Getting there and holding the date
Paphos International Airport is 15 kilometres away, about a quarter of an hour by road, and Larnaca about 100 kilometres; the resort arranges taxis and minibus transfers. It is open all year, but Apollo Tavern is the only one of its restaurants and bars that does not close for the season, and the Resort Lobbies take up to 200 for larger winter receptions. A non-refundable deposit of 15 per cent holds the date, and the rest is paid in three further non-refundable instalments before the day, with final numbers due 72 hours ahead. The Columbia Beach Resort profile sets out every space, and The Cyprus Wedding Atlas and weddings in Limassol cover the wider island.
Ten under the saints, or 45 outside
The decision that comes first is how many people will watch the vows, because the chapel offers two answers: ten under Corbidge’s saints, or 45 outside the chapel. Settle that number, then check your date.
