Cyprus’s flag features a copper-colored outline of the entire island of Cyprus above two green olive branches on a white field. It is one of the few national flags that displays a map of the country itself.
The flag entered use on August 16, 1960, when Cyprus became independent under the Zürich and London Agreements. Turkish Cypriot artist İsmet Güney designed it. The neutral white background and olive branches were intended to express peace and cooperation between the island’s Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities.
The map’s copper-orange color is a deliberate reference to Cyprus’s historic copper deposits. In fact, the island’s name is often linked to ancient words for copper, although the exact linguistic history remains debated. The flag avoids the blue and red colors traditionally associated with Greece and Turkey, reflecting the goal of creating a distinct, shared national identity.
Kosovo is a frequent visual mix-up because its flag also shows a map, but Kosovo’s map is gold and appears beneath six white stars on a blue field. Antarctica’s widely used flag proposals are not the official national flag of a sovereign country.