Despite a 30-year split of the island, southern Cyprus has flourished economically, with a thriving offshore financial sector, shipping and tourism giving Greek Cypriots a higher standard of living than EU citizens in Greece and Portugal.
On the northern side of the dividing Green Line, bled dry by decades of international sanctions, time has ticked by slowly, with agriculture and agro-tourism struggling to compete with the big business of casinos, outlawed in the south.
The prospect of EU membership, heavy international pressure and the lure for Turkish Cypriots of a post-reunification economic boom is forcing islanders, many reluctantly, to vote Saturday on a UN peace plan.
Since a shock April 2003 decision by the Turkish Cypriot administration to re-open checkpoints along the buffer zone for the first time in 29 years, around 10,000 Turkish Cypriots now work daily in the south.
The economy relies on a vibrant financial services sector with a sizeable international banking and business presence. Analysts believe EU accession will attract more foreign investors and help Cyprus develop as a regional financial centre.
"With a preferential tax regime between offshore and onshore businesses now replaced by a flat rate of tax, we are no longer seen as a tax haven," analyst Pambos Papageorgiou told AFP in early April.
Cyprus aims to meet EU economic convergence criteria in 2007 but a widening public deficit is hampering efforts to quickly adopt the single European currency.
"The target is still realistic but the government needs to take bold measures by freezing state sector salaries and seeking to privatise public services," Papageorgiou said.
The eastern Mediterranean island, steeped in ancient Greek mythology, rich in archaeology and a magnet for sun-deprived tourists, is also Europes most intractable political conflict.
Occupied by empire after empire from the Greeks to the Ottomans and most recently Britain, Cyprus won its independence in 1960, only to be plunged into ethnic strife three years later.
Years of bitter fighting between the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority killed and displaced thousands, as villages were ransacked, churches and mosques pillaged.
Following a Greek Cypriot coup that tried but failed to unite the island with Athens, Turkish forces occupied the north in 1974, slicing the island and its capital in two.
Thirty years later, the northern third is still under Turkish occupation and international efforts to broker a deal between rival Greek and Turkish Cypriot administrations have come to nothing.
The island is packed with soldiers, including 34,500 Turkish and Turkish Cypriot troops in the north, more than 12,000 Greek and National Guard reserves in the south and a 1,230-strong UN force.
Britain maintains 4,200 soldiers on two sovereign bases in the south, nearly half of which London has offered to relinquish if a UN reunification deal is signed before Cyprus joins the European Union on May 1.
Positioned on the cusp of Europe, Africa and Asia, Cyprus now also straddles a no mans land between partition and freedom unthinkable 12 months ago, with Greek Cypriots visiting homes they were forced to flee in the north and Turkish Cypriots tasting a bit of the southern good life they have been denied. But with memories still bitter and heady debate over what many see as a convoluted settlement, reunification is far from a foregone conclusion.