Our Lady of the Rocks — Gospa od Škrpjela in Montenegrin — sits about 150 metres offshore from the baroque town of Perast, in the inner Bay of Kotor. It is the only man-made island in the Adriatic, built up over centuries from the seabed of what was once a submerged reef in roughly 5 metres of water.
According to local tradition, on 22 July 1452 two fishermen brothers from Perast — the Mortešić brothers — discovered an icon of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child resting on a rock barely breaking the surface. One gravely ill brother recovered after the icon was brought home. When it mysteriously reappeared on the rock each time it was taken away, the townspeople took it as a sign that the Virgin wished to remain there and vowed to build a shrine on the spot.
The people of Perast then began dropping stones and scuttling old ships filled with rocks to raise an artificial island — a process that continued for generations. The first chapel rose on the growing platform by 1484. More than 100 old and captured ships were eventually sunk to form the foundation. The island reached its present outline around 1630, covering approximately 3,030 square metres. Today it holds the baroque Church of Our Lady of the Rocks, a small museum, and the original icon on the marble main altar.