What Is Kythira Known For?

Kythira holds a claim that European painters have returned to for centuries, since Greek mythology names the island as the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Kythira is known first for that myth. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite emerged from sea foam formed near the island following a violent struggle between the primordial god Uranus and his son Cronus, and the winds are said to have then carried her onward to Cyprus. That connection stuck regardless of where her story continued, and Homer refers to her in the Iliad by the epithet Kythereia, tying the goddess directly to the island's name across ancient literature.

Kythira is equally known for the Temple of Aphrodite Ourania near Paleopolis, described by ancient sources including the geographer Pausanias as the oldest and most sacred sanctuary dedicated to the goddess anywhere in Greece, predating even her famous temple on Cyprus. Archaeological finds around the site, including statues and inscriptions, support that long history of worship, and ancient writers frequently referred to Kythira as one of the holiest places in the Greek world specifically because of it.

That mythology has shaped European art and literature well beyond antiquity. Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Jean-Antoine Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera both draw directly on the island's association with the goddess, and writers from Herodotus to Baudelaire have referenced Kythira in connection with love and longing. Some scholars trace the island's own name to the Greek word keutho, meaning to hide, tied to legends of Aphrodite's concealed arrival.

Kythira suits travelers drawn to that layered mythological and artistic history, connecting today by ferry to Antikythera and Crete.