Restoration work has begun at the church of Ayios Demetrianos in Lapithos, with a nine-month programme of conservation aimed at preserving the historic site set to begin, the UNDP said on Friday.

The project is funded by the EU and local community contributions and will be carried out under the technical supervision of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In a social media post, co-chair of the Technical Committee for Cultural Heritage Sotos Ktoris said work is also ongoing simultaneously at more than 70 cemeteries and religious sites.

He also confirmed that within the same contract, maintenance work will be carried out at Ayios Charalambos in Agridaki in the Kyrenia district.

Ayios Demetrianos was the main church in the village of Larnaka tis Lapithos, where the significant archaeological discovery of a unique Greco-Phoenican inscription, the Anat-Athena Bilingual from the 4th century BC, was found carved into the rocks of the Kyrenia mountains.