In a lecture delivered in May 2001, historian Aikaterini Koumarianou presented a group of early news sheets on the Turco-Venetian war of 1570–1572 from the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation collections. These printed sheets, which disseminated news and information, were the forerunners of the newspapers that appeared in the early seventeenth century. They were printed in various Western towns — Venice, Florence, Verona, Viterbo, Paris, Osma in Spain, Nuremberg — written and translated into Italian, French, Spanish and German. These rare documents were known as avvisi, Zeitungen, occasionnels, canards and hojas volantes and are today valuable sources for both the scholar and the layman as they record current events in unmediated ways.

Seventeenth Annual Lecture on Cypriot History and Archaeology