This article examines the continuities and discontinuities of imperial rule in Cyprus. It specifically investigates how the UK military base regime in the island has been negotiated in its local and regional contexts, including the recent accession of Cyprus into the European Union (EU) from whose territory the bases have been excluded. The study outlines the legal and political discourses and aesthetic practices surrounding the bases, and attempts to uncover their symbolic contradictions, paradoxes and implications. To this extent it underscores the tensions faced by competing discourses and practices of post-colonial emancipation, of peacekeeping and peacebuilding, as well as of regional integration and global governance. It also underlines the diffusion of colonial power that occurred after independence and the limits this has placed on both British and Cypriot claims to sovereignty.