Skala Sikamia Panagia Gorgona Lesvos Greece

Legends, popular and religious tradition inspired the prose writer Stratis Myrivilis, whose birthplace was Sykamnia, to write his novel Panagia i Gorgona. It is perched on a small rock in the sea, in the small harbor with the fishing boats at Skala Sykamias, on the northern coastline of the island. According to traditions, it owes its name to a fresco that existed in it (today it does not exist) and presented the Virgin Mary from the waist down with a mermaid's tail. According to him, in fact, the mural was the work of an unknown popular painter who was inspired by legends, popular and religious traditions, while it is, in fact, also about a Virgin Mary "the strangest in Greece and in the whole world of Christianity ", as he describes her in the novel "The Virgin Mary the Mermaid". The locals call the rock where the church is located "Tis Panagia ta Rahta". In the square there was also a large sycamore tree whose roots were gushing water. This plane tree became known in 2015-16, in the midst of the immigration crisis, as the solidarity group "platanos refugee solidarity" was organized under it. The sycamore trunk was snapped by the wind in July 2019. In front of the plane tree is a beach, known as Platanos. On the other side of the settlement is Kaya beach with sand and small pebbles.