Paphos

Paphos was the capital city and chief administrative center of the Roman province of Cyprus, situated on the southwestern coast of the island. It served as the residence of the Roman proconsul who governed Cyprus, and it was in Paphos that Paul and Barnabas encountered the Jewish sorcerer Bar-Jesus (also called Elymas) during their first missionary journey (Acts 13:6–12).

The confrontation in Paphos is significant in early church history: Paul rebuked Elymas for opposing the gospel before Sergius Paulus, the proconsul, who was seeking to hear the word of God. When Elymas was struck temporarily blind, the proconsul believed, becoming one of the earliest recorded conversions of a Roman official to Christianity. It is also at this point in Acts that Saul is consistently called Paul. The city had a much older history as a center of Aphrodite worship, with a famous temple nearby at Old Paphos.