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Aphrodite's rock lies to the east of Paphos and can be reached in 15 minutes by car. It is an idyllic setting for a picnic and swim in the warm waters of the Mediterranean sea.

Around 1200 BC, Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, emerged from the gentle jade-colored sea foam at Petra tou Romiou, a boulder that juts up from the south coast of Cyprus. The name Aphrodite, means “foam born.” She was the most ancient goddess of the Olympians.

Zeus arranged Aphrodite's marriage to the good but ugly craft-god Hephaistos. The ultimate key to her heart was found by Adonis.

Eros, Aphrodite's son, accidentally wounded her bosom with one of his arrows. Reeling from the wound, she took solace in her mineral pool, the famed Baths of Aphrodite on the Akamas Peninsula of Cyprus. The hunter Adonis was within sight that day, and the love he inspired in Aphrodite was the greatest and most powerful she would ever know.

Sadly, one summers day, Adonis, the proud mortal, pursued a boar which proceeded to trounce and kill him with his tusks. Little did he know this was a jealous Ares in disguise. Aphrodite heard his cries from her swan-drawn chariot, high above the island's highest forested peaks in the Troodos mountains. Once by his side, she summoned the nymph Menthe (the mint spirit), who sprinkled nectar on his blood, and then by magic red anemones sprang forth. Each spring, they rise again from the fertile soil of Cyprus gently moving in the wind (Anemos in Greek means wind). Is it Aphrodite's tears that coax the anemonies into bloom?

Take a sip from "Fontana Amorosa" the natural spring on the Akamas Peninsula from which Aphrodite used to drink, and love may materialize. A riot of green in the spring, the fountain is accessible via a beautiful hiking path on the Akamas.

Aphrodite was bound to attract a following, and sure enough, in the 12th century BC, an elaborate sanctuary was built in her honour at Palea Pafos (present-day Kouklia) - the most significant of a dozen such consecrated sites in Cyprus. Amphoras and ceremonial bowls from the sacred gardens that once surrounded the temple, are on display in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

Some accounts of the sacred site have young women congregating to ritually sacrifice their virginity however sacred prostitution was the likelier scenario. According to Herodotus, every girl had to make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary and there make love to a stranger. The girls would sit in the sacred gardens wearing crowns of rope and wait for men passing by to choose them. A man would throw an offering at the feet of his preferred "pilgrim" and utter the words "I invoke the goddess upon you," whereupon the sacrificial act would be consummated.

While Herodotus was given to overstatement, it is no exaggeration to say that the Sanctuary of Aphrodite was among the most revered and frequented temples of the ancient world.