Naples - Capri Travel Guides | Naples | Sub Regions | Naples - Capri

Somehow managing to retain an atmosphere of chic insouciance even in the face of a tourist onslaught, Capri has remained a playground for the privileged for the last two hundred years, just as it was in Roman times. Capri Town's tiny piazzetta, filled with nonchalant waiters, the well-dressed and expensive cafés, embodies this attitude and is the focus for Caprese strutting and people- watching. Irrespective of sexuality there is something camp about the place too, and the island continues to be a magnet for upwardly mobile young gay men.

Until a road was carved out of the massive limestone cliff dividing the higher, quieter, Anacapri from Capri itself in 1874, the two halves of this island were very much separate, the only connection being the 800 or so steps of the Scala Fenicia. Nowadays the island’s two parts are united in the pursuit of tourism and it can get unpleasantly packed with visitors in the summer months, especially around the centre of Capri Town, and at some of the more popular sights such as the Grotta Azzurra, Tiberius's Villa Jovis (from where he ruled the Roman Empire from 27 to 37AD) and the Villa San Michele, the 19th-century home of Swedish author Axel Munthe. There are plenty of other caves and old palaces to share around, however, among them the Roman Villa di Damecuta and the Grotta di Matermania, complete with more Roman remains. And Marina Piccola, on the southern edge of the island, has some of the best beaches.

Total escape from anything resembling a tourist trap is still possible, however. The most beautiful spot of all on the island is the summit and surroundin74g wild area of Monte Solaro, with its views all around, as well as 589 metres almost straight down, and orchids among the 800 different species of wild flowers on its slopes.

Sights

Grotta Azzurra

A constant flow of boats leaves Marina Grande throughout the day to take you to the grotto (€6 return) but you have to change into a rowing boat in order to enter the cave (another €4.10 plus €4 entrance fee). The first part of the journey can also be done overland, either on foot, or by bus from Anacapri.

Capri’s most popular attraction is a cave at the northwest of the island where sunlight beating down from outside shines up through the water inside, creating a distinctly magical blue glow. Just how magic it feels may depend on how many other people are there trying simultaneously to experience the same effect. The best times to go are early in the morning or while everyone else is having lunch. Very early and very late, before and after the rush of boats, it’s theoretically possible to swim around into the cave.

Marina Grande

To avoid the crowds on the funicular (€1.30 single, every 15 minutes, T 081-8370420) and the bus (€1.30 single, every 5 or 10 minutes, T 081-8370420) take the signposted winding path which goes up the hill from behind the piazza to the eastern end of the seafront. Both the funicular and the buses run from the western end of the port.

Down the steep hill from Capri Town, the received wisdom about Capri’s main port is that it’s best to get in and out of it as soon as possible. It’s actually not such a bad place, though if you arrive with a thousand or so other people off the ferry all at the same time as you, you may disagree.

Capri Town and around

Parco Astarita open May-Sep 1000-1800, Oct-Apr 1000-1400.

The heart of the island is the town of Capri itself, and the heart of the town is la Piazzetta, a tiny piazza squeezed full of chairs from its four expensive cafés. Despite the fact that it can get overrun at busy times it is still a picturesque spot, and an excellent one for a stint of people-watching. Between the piazzetta and the funicular station is an attractive terrace with benches overlooking Marina Grande below.

The one side of the Piazzetta not taken up by cafés is occupied by the Chiesa di Santo Stefano, with its distinctive grey and white dome and roof.

To the right of the church via Maria Serafina, one of Capri’s most attractive and peaceful streets, winds its way under whitewashed arches before turning into via Castello and climbing to Belvedere Cannone, with great views south over Marina Piccola (where there is a small beach, see below) and the rocky islands of the Faraglioni, often used as the symbol of the island.

Another excellent stroll from the piazzetta heads out along the shop-lined via Vittorio Emanuele, via Camerelle and via Tragara to the Belvedere di Tragara, near the Faraglioni, before curving around the southeast corner of the island. A well-built path cuts through a wilder part of the island which passes the Villa Malaparte below, a strange-looking terracotta coloured modernist building constructed in the early 1940s and used as the setting for Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Le Mépris (Contempt), starring Brigitte Bardot. Just before the path turns inland again, the Grotta di Matermania may have been the centre of the cult of the Goddess Cybele, banned by Rome. The remains of two rooms still exist in the cave, with some very faint traces of Roman frescoes. In Roman times it was lined with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, most of which has since collapsed. Beyond the cave up some steep steps at Bar Trattoria Le Grotelle (where you may need a drink to recover from the climb up) a short path to the right leads to the Arco Naturale: an enormous stone arch towering over the sea below. Via Matermina continues back to the piazzetta.

Heading east out of the piazzetta along via Le Botteghe takes you to the simple and attractive little Chiesa di San Michele della Croce. From here via Tiberio heads northeast to Tiberius’s villa at the eastern tip of the island. Just before the villa itself, Parco Astarita has three terraces amongst the trees with increasingly impressive views down to the sea and right to the Faraglioni.

Marina Piccola

Giardini Augusto: 0900-1900 daily.

A handful of somewhat cramped white pebbly beaches sit in between cafés and restaurants here while cliffs tower behind to the west. There are various private beaches which you can pay to access but the public section in the middle is perfectly good and the swimming is excellent, especially through a low natural arch in the rock where there are also some good diving spots.

To the east via Krupp winds along the coast and up a gently climbing switchback path to the flowery Giardini Augusto at the southern edge of Capri Town. Officially it’s closed due to dangers of rockfalls but locals and rebellious tourists climb past the barriers without seeming particularly concerned.

Villa Jovis

Mon-Sun 0900-1hr before sunset. €2.

Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars paints a portrait of Tiberius as a perverted, paranoid and violent Emperor. How much his account is an exaggeration is still hotly debated but the reputation has stuck. Whether Tiberius actually did push people he didn’t like much over the edge of the 330-metre Salto di Tiberio is also open to question, but what is more sure is that this is where he ruled the Empire from 27 to 37AD. The four enormous reservoirs around which the complex is built could have contained 8,000 square metres of water, and these and a baths complex survive. Largely, however, the position and the views are more impressive than the ruins themselves.

Anacapri

Buses (€1.30) run from Marina Grande and from the bus station in via Roma in Capri to piazza Vittoria in Anacapri every 10 minutes or so throughout the day.

It is said that until the mid-18th century Capresi would live entire lives on one half of the island without visiting the other. The road, built in 1874, changed that but Anacapri remains slightly more down-to-earth than its self-consciously chic neighbour. The physical differences between the two island halves are best appreciated from the peak of Monte Solaro, or better still, by climbing down the dangerously steep path through il Passetiello. When author Axel Munthe came to the island in the 1920s he chose the Villa San Michele as its most perfect spot and if you can fight through the modern-day pilgrims you might see why. There are other interesting features, such as the elaborate floor of the Chiesa Monumentale San Michele, but generally it is the simple attraction of relative peace and calm that people come here looking for.

The wonderfully colourful majolica tiled floor of the baroque church of Chiesa Monumentale San Michele (0930-1800, €1) in Anacapri’s piazza San Nicola dates from 1761 and features a depiction of paradise complete with cats and dogs, a unicorn, an armadillo and a very yellow Adam and Eve.

Made famous by Axel Munthe’s book, the house and gardens of Villa San Michele (viale A Munthe, Anacapri T 081-8371401 F 081-8373530. Nov-Jan 1030-1530, Mar 0930-1630, Apr, Oct 0930-1700, May-Sep 0930-1800; €5) that he built are kept as they were when he lived here and make it easy to see why the Swedish author fell in love with the place, though these days everything is very well nailed down. The Story of San Michele, a forerunner of many later foreigner-living-in-southern-Europe travel books, was published in London in 1929, and has been translated into more than 30 languages.

Fans of the book can see the original typescript in a glass case while everyone else wanders around the covered walkways of the terraced gardens listening to birdsong, peering at Munthe’s various pieces of antiquity and admiring the views. At the far tip of the garden a stone sphinx looks over a particularly fine panorama towards the Sorrento Peninsula.

Monte Solaro

Halfway between piazza Vittoria and Villa San Michele, via Montesolaro (also signposted “sentiero per Cetrella”) heads right up away from the hordes below into a different kind of Capri altogether. The stony path climbs gently through a landscape that becomes progressively less cultivated the higher you go. The real change comes, however, when you get up onto the ridge and a wild valley opens up in front of you. From here you can go left out to Monte Capello and beyond through asphodels and orchids in spring, or head right up to the summit of Monte Solaro or continue to the beautifully situated monastery at Cetrella. If you have time, all three are worth the effort. At the top of Monte Solaro there are some jaw-dropping views, 360 degrees around, and, to the south, 589 vertiginous metres down to Ventroso and the sea below. From Anacapri to the summit takes about 45 minutes, though you’ll almost certainly want to stop and admire the view on the way.

Alternatively take the chairlift from the end of via Capodimonte in Anacapri, which is also quite spectacular, and quicker (12 minutes), though less satisfying. €5.50 return, €4 one way.

From the monastery at Cetrella (you can climb the stairs in the church of Santa Maria a Cetrella for yet another view) one of Capri’s best-kept secrets, a path down through il Passetiello, is a spectacular but precariously steep way down into Capri. It descends what you (and almost everybody else) will have previously considered to be a sheer and impenetrable rockface. Turn immediately right out of the church (a small sign reads “per il passetiello”) and follow the path all the way. It is marked with red splodges but isn’t hard to follow. It’s overgrown at the top, however, and eroded further down and is only suitable for the sure-footed. Allow about 50 minutes to get from Cetrella right back to the piazzetta in Capri.

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