Kythera has been known since ancient times as the Isle of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, who, during the Theogony of Hesiodus, was captured on the shores of Kythera, when, Cronus (Saturn) tore off Uranus' genital organs and threw them to her. Today they can be seen as two small rocks rising up out of the water on the Eastern coast of the island…The Goddess emerged in Cyprus where she was worshipped as Aphrodite the Pandemos, Goddess of sex as opposed to Uranus who was worshipped in Kythera as the Goddess of pure, innocent love.

The Minoans had classified Kythera since early times as a stop-over point during their travels towards the West and had created the settlement Skandia, in what today is called Paleopolis, as well as the significant mountain-top sanctuary named Agios Georgios on the Mount. From the 6th Century onwards the island began to be inhabited more systematically.

In about the 10th and 11th Centuries it again acquired some importance and became a part of Monemvasia.Around that time the fortified capital of the Byzantine period, Agios Dimitrios was built, (today's Paliohora), which contained a large number of churches and a significant amount of inhabitants. In 1537 Agios Dimitrios was captured and destroyed by Algerian pirates under the leadership of Haiderin Barbarossa. During this period the island was dominated by the Venieri family, descendents of the Venetian adventurer Marko Venieri who conquered Kythera in 1207. The Venetians became aware of the island's key position at the entrance of the Eastern Mediterranean and thus undertook significant attempts to fortify and inhabit it. The feudal system, however, which they enforced gave rise to unhappiness among the inhabitants, who at the same time had to cope with frequent piratical raids. The outcome of all this was the rapid decrease in population and on-going protests to the Venetian authorities on the administration of the island. Nevertheless, the Venetians governed the island until 1797 with exception one small period during which the island was won over by the Turks (1715). In 1797, Kythera, like all the Ionian Islands was taken over by the French and in 1809 by the English who held onto the island until 1864, when, together with the rest of the Ionian islands, was united with Greece.