Building is one of the oldest professions still surviving to this day in Cyprus. Education in the ‘htistiji’, or construction work, began at a young age. Typically, following a decision by the father of the family, and given that no technical school existed at the time, a young man of around 11 or 12 years of age would drop out of school and begin his apprenticeship under a Master builder. The suburb of Kaimakli in Nicosia was in the past a centre of education for builders, as many young men from all over the island would arrive in the area as ‘tsirakkia’, or young apprentices, to learn from other Masters the arts of Building and Carpentry.