The archaeological area of ​​Kition consists of two sites: Kathari and Pampoula. It is located within the limits of the modern city of Larnaca. Various finds came to light between the 18th and 19th centuries, during the excavation works conducted by foreign travellers and looters of tombs. One of these discoveries is the famous Assyrian stele of King Sargon II, now in Berlin. A plaster cast of the stele is exhibited in the Larnaca Museum. The first systematic excavations began in 1929 from the Swedish archaeological expedition of Cyprus. In 1959, the Department of Antiquities began excavating the Kathari site. After the 1974 invasion, the French expedition of the University of Lyon, which had hitherto excavated the Salamis site, assumed responsibility for excavating the Pampoula site.

The earliest stages of human settlement and religious worship in Kition are located on the Kathari site. Five consecutive temples and copper smelting workshops have already been found and date from the late 13th to the late 11th century BC. This corresponds to the late Bronze Age and the geometric period, during which the city of Kition flourished and it was inhabited by Achaeans of Mycenaean origin. After their destruction, a temple identified as that of Astarte, was erected in their place by the Phoenicians, around 850 BC. The temple was used until the beginning of the third century BC, when it was also destroyed.

Excavations at the Pampoula site showed that the area was inhabited continuously from the end of the geometric period until the Hellenistic age. The first architectural remains dating back to the 9th century BC consist of a temple and various other buildings. During the archaic and classical period, the temple was enlarged to include many rooms, open fields with stoas and sanctuaries, as well as hearths and industrial installations for copper smelting. The variety of finds indicates that a number of deities were worshiped in Kition, the most significant of which was the Phoenician deity Astarte (equivalent to Aphrodite), Melkart (equivalent of Heracles) and Esmoun (equivalent to Asclepius), as well as the deities Egyptians Hathor, Bes and Horus.

During the classical period, large construction works were commissioned in the city of Kition, as monumental public buildings that were part of an ambitious public works project. Part of this project was also the drying up of the marshes in the Pampoula district, the creation of a health system and the construction of two ports, one for commercial purposes and one for military use. Only the military one has been excavated so far. The ramps used to haul ships into the port for repairs or custody still exist.