Limassol lies on Akrotiri Bay, on the southern coast, southwest of Nicosia; It is the island's second largest city and is also its chief tourist centre. Limassol's rise from a humble market town between the ancient settlements of Amathus and Curium took place at the end of the Byzantine Empire, when Richard I the Lion-Heart landed there in 1191 and was married to Berengaria of Navarre in the chapel of a castle fortress, now a regional museum and one of only two surviving buildings of the period.

After the Genoese seizure of Famagusta in 1372, the port's fortunes increased; but damage from numerous incursions between 1414 and 1426, the Turkish invasion of 1570, and a disastrous earthquake had reduced its population to 150 by 1815. Its resurgence dates from the end of the 19th century, when the island came under British administration.