Travel Guide Kouklia

For 1,600 years, this place overlooking the sea was a major religious site in the Greco-Roman sphere. Up until the 4th century AD, pilgrims, especially childless couples, came from far and wide to honor Aphrodite here. Legend has it that the goddess of Love, Beauty and (above all) Fertility came into the world by rising from the waters at the site known as "Aphrodite's Rock". Kouklia was also the birthplace of the city of Paphos, around 1600 BC, before being transferred to its current location (the archaeological site of Nea Paphos) twelve centuries later. The remains of the ancient city of Palaipaphos ("ancient Paphos") and its great sanctuary, which continued to function until the advent of Christianity, remain here. Here are two good reasons to come here: the archaeological site of Palaipaphos, on the heights and listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site, and the unmissable "Rock of Aphrodite", on the seafront. But here are also two reasons to hate Kouklia, as the neighbouring hills are home to the largest golf complexes on this water-starved island, one called Secret Valley and the other Aphrodite Hills.