A story tells of Salamis being founded by King Priam’s nephew, Teucer, who could not return to his home island of Salamis after the siege of Troy because he had failed to avenge the death of his half-brother, Ajax. Much of the city’s extensive remains belong to the Roman period, following a disastrous earthquake in AD74, after which Salamis’s thousand-year supremacy was eclipsed by Paphos as the principal city on the island. Royal tombs, which revealed items from Egypt and the Middle East as well as from Greece, date from earlier times. As a Christian centre, it has the remains of a Byzantine cathedral. The monastery near the entrance to the site, dedicated to St Barnabas who was stoned to death in Salamis in AD75, has a museum with icons. The inhabitants abandoned the city during the 8th-century Arab invasions, settling in Famagusta, to the south. Soon covered in sand that helped in its preservation, Salamis was not excavated until the 19th century. Though much is still to be excavated, the site stretches for a mile along the sea shore and there is a museum in the extensive acropolis.