Tsambika Beach

This guide to Tsambika Beach in Rhodes traces the medieval legend behind its name, when fishermen kept finding an icon of the Virgin Mary washed up on the sand no matter how many times they carried it away. It follows islanders hauling stone up the steep hillside to build her a chapel, a climb of roughly three hundred rock-cut steps that the women among the builders made the hardest work of. Look up from the sand and the white chapel is still visible on the ridge above.