Aging grand hotel highlights the ethnic division in Cyprus

With Italian chandeliers still hanging in the lobby, the Ledra Palace Hotel in Cyprus still manages to hold onto a flicker of its old majesty despite the shell craters and bullet holes that scar its sandstone facade.
It's been 45 years since the pitter-patter of glitterati high-heels on the hotel's floors was replaced by the thud of soldiers' combat boots.
During the war in the summer of 1974 that cleaved Cyprus along ethnic lines, United Nations peacekeepers took over the hotel, instantly turning it into an emblem of the east Mediterranean island nation's division.
After countless rotations of soldiers used the hotel as a barracks, the United Nations says the aging building's rooms are no longer suitable for military housing. Renovations to bring the Ledra Palace up to modern safety standards are too costly, so the upper two floors of the venerable building now sit...

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