Petra tou Romiou

A pale limestone stack rises out of the surf a short way off a pebble beach on the south-west coast of Cyprus, with a scatter of smaller rocks around it and the swell breaking white against all of them. It is a modest landform by size, but few rocks in the Mediterranean carry this much story. Petra tou Romiou is better known as Aphrodite's Rock: by long tradition, this is where the goddess of love came ashore from the sea foam.

The classical myth goes back to Hesiod's Theogony. Cronus, urged on by his mother Gaia, maimed his father Uranus and cast the severed parts into the sea, and from the foam that gathered around them Aphrodite was born. A Cypriot version of the tale holds that the rock itself is a piece of Uranus's body, and that the maiden who rose from the foam was carried first to Kythera and then on to Cyprus. The goddess had one of her most important cult centres a few kilometres away, at the sanctuary of Old Paphos in present-day Kouklia, which ties the legend to a real place of worship. Local tradition adds that anyone who swims around the rock will be granted lasting beauty.

The Greek name tells a different story. Petra tou Romiou means "Rock of the Romios" – of the Greek, in the sense the Byzantine Greeks gave to the word "Roman". It refers to Digenes Akritas, the half-Byzantine, half-Arab hero of a medieval epic, who according to legend hurled an enormous boulder from the Troodos Mountains to drive off Saracen raiders; a neighbouring rock is still called the Saracen Rock. Another story links the nearby beach to the Achaeans, who were said to have landed here on their way home from Troy. The sea along this stretch of coast is usually rough, which only adds to the effect of the foam around the rocks.

Getting there

The rock lies just offshore beside the coastal road between Paphos and Limassol, about 22 km south-east of Paphos. The nearest airport is Paphos International Airport (PFO), about 14 km away by straight line.