Italy’s Island of Capri

Details: Parent Category: Travel Info; Category: Travel Feature; Published on Thursday, 17 December 2009 15:30; Written by Laura Blum

For anyone still planning a decadent New Year’s escape, Italy’s Island of Capri could be just the ticket. Since Tiberius and Caligula indulged their darker pleasures there, the island resort has helped fun seekers pass the chillier months, and its lusty charms persist in heating the soul.

A veritable Who’s Who of writers, artists and composers have staked out Caprese crags in more recent times. Even your mom knows the song, “The Isle of Capri.”

All of four square miles, the Bay of Naples’ glammest island is easy to get around. From Naples, it’s a 40-minute hydrofoil or 80-minute ferry, and half that from Sorrento. A funicular railway hoists comers from either of Capri’s two marinas – Grande in the north or Piccolo in the south – to Piazza Umberto I, diminutively called the Piazzetta. No self-respecting tourist leaves without cadging a shot of its historic Clock Tower or sipping overpriced drinks in its café bars.

Blue Grotto
Capri’s signal attraction is the Blue Grotto. Whether this azure-watered cavern is open to winter visitors depends on the sea and the skies. (In amenable conditions, hours are roughly 10 AM – noon.) Should umbrella conditions prevail, simply imagine the nymphaeum that decorated its flanks in antiquity, and sourgrape that it wouldn’t have been on display anyway, even had the elements cooperated.

http://www.capri.com/en/grotta-azzurra

Faraglioni 
A stack of rocks jutting out of the sea iconicize Capri’s north vista. Never have landslides and erosion so ignited the imagination as with this limestone clump, partly named after a sea lion who sunbathed there centuries back.

http://www.capri.com/en/faraglioni

Belvedere of Tragara
To properly gawk at the Faraglioni, this leafy road gives quite the view. Its name, which means “goats” or “pen,” invokes Capri’s early days as a Greek colony. Today's Villa La Certosella stands where the Roman residential complex once began, the only remnants of which is the marble floor now in St. Stephen's Cathedral’s Chapel of the Rosario. From the Piazzetta, reach Tragara by a 20-minute trek along Via Vittorio Emanuele and Via Camerelle.

Certosa di San Giacomo
The Charterhouse of St. James was a 14th-century monastery founded by nobleman and royal advisor Count Giacomo Arucci as his end of a divine bargain to produce a male heir. Today this exemplar of Carthusian architecture in all its monkish wonders hosts a museum, library and screening hall.

Via Certosa
+39 81 837 6218

Cerio Museum
The Cerio Museum holds everything from fossils and shells to animals and plants in its 20,000 natural and archaeological exhibits. Largely hoarded in the 19th century by Dr. Ignazio Cerio, the depot is housed within an old palazzo located on the Piazzetta.
Piazzetta Cerio, 5 - 80073
+39 81 837 6681; 081-8370858
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www.centrocaprense.it

Gardens of Augustus
 Landscaped among Roman ruins, this horticultural showcase was bequeathed to the town of Capri by Friedrich Alfred Krupp. One of its evergreen flourishes is a statue of Lenin by Italian sculptor Giacomo Manzu.
Near Via Krupp
www.capri.net/en/t/augustus-gardens-via-krupp

The Church of St. Michele Arcangelo
San Michele (St. Michael) ranks right up there in the island’s must-tour list. Its main event is a majolica tile floor depicting Adam and Eve in an Eden enlivened by unicorns and other mythical beasts. The frequent buses and chairlifts that shuttle between the villages of Capri and Anacapri, where the 17th-18th-century church and its surrounding Piazza San Nicola are perched, mean that trippers needn’t feel stranded. Another chairlift A chairlift from Anacapri’s central square, Piazza della Vittoria, transports the non-acrophobic to the top of Mount Solaro for a postcard-ready view of the Mediterranean.

Piazza San Nicola
Anacapri
80071  
+39 081 837 2396

Villa St. Michele
Just off of Piazza della Vittoria is the cliffside house and garden of Villa St. Michele. It was built amidst Roman ruins by Swedish doctor and animal lover Axel Munthe, whose 1929 memoir, The Story of San Michele, became a global bestseller. After recovering from the panorama of the Bay of Naples, browse the museum’s antiquities, including a head of the Medusa, a marble bust of Emperor Tiberius and an Egyptian sphinx.
Via le Axel Munthe
34 80071
Anacapri  
+39 - 081 – 8371401
www.sanmichele.org

Villa Jovis
Villa-hopping gains momentum at this 1st-century BC spread. Sited at the spur of Capri’s much-trumpeted Viale Amedeo Maturi, Villa Jovis is what remains of the palace where Ceasar Tiberius ruled the Roman Empire for a decade. Its perch at cliff’s edge afforded him privacy, security, and, a spit down the road at “Tiberius’s Leap,” a spot to dispatch unruly servants and guests. The villa grounds also house the Church of Santa Maria del Soccorso and a statue of the Madonna photographable from the sea below.
Via Tiberio
+39 81 837 0381
www.capri.com/en/villa-jovis

Villa Lysis aka Villa Fersen
Down the street from Villa Jovis is Villa Lysis, a Neoclassical beauty named after the young consort of Socrates mentioned in Plato’s Dialogue on Friendship. The columned and tiled residence is also known as Villa Fersen in honor of its first owner, Count Jacques Fersen d'Adelsward, a French poet and writer who overdosed on cocaine in 1923. Check out the basement Chinese Room, which was an opium den.
Via Tiberio 80073