On the Isle of Capri

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By Dea Adria Mallin

First the emperors, then the monks, then the artists and writers, and now the camera-toting tourists – all have been streaming to this island, drawn inexorably by the beauty of its dramatic cliffs, its sunlight, and its luxuriant vegetation.

So taken by its charm was the Emperor Augustus that he traded the island of Ischia to Naples for Capri and went there periodically for relaxation. His stepson and successor, Tiberius, found a way to substitute R and R for governance. Tiberius was a porn king who wouldn't leave his sporting, and thus made Capri – only 3.5 miles long by less than 2 miles wide (6 kilometers by 3 kilometers) – the capital of the Roman Empire between 27 and 37 AD.

The only access to Capri is by water, and most visitors come by boat or hydrofoil from the port of Naples, arriving at Marina Grande, a small port area designed to get you where you are going. If you’ve brought only hand luggage (the way to arrive in Capri) and are not proud, take it up the funicular yourself, or else the hotel porter will charge you L9,000 ($5) per bag and not forewarn you. Non-resident vehicles are not permitted on the island, so you get up to Capri on the funicular (a few minutes) or the bus (20 minutes) for a dollar, and for another dollar, you can hop a bus up to Anacapri. There are taxis, but the price between Marina Grande and Capri, or between Capri and Anacapri is $25!

The Capri season starts in April and finishes in October, and the island will enchant you immediately, despite the whoosh of tourists and the inflated prices of everything. But never mind. Absorb the arches, the domes, the staircases, the buttresses, the sudden tiny piazzas, the narrow walkways, the terraced gardens, the fruiting lemon and nespoli trees, the play of shadow and light, the steep plunge into the sea at each turn, the whitewashed everything built into the cliff sides. Such luminaries as D.H. Lawrence, Axel Munthe, Mendelssohn, Dumas, Hans Christian Anderson, Maxim Gorki, Noel Coward, and Graham Greene have each in their time been wooed and seduced by Capri's charms.

There is a central piazza, officially called Piazza Umberto I and known as the Piazzetta, as well as a 17^th-century baroque campanile and clock tower, a 17^th-century monastery and the ruins of Tiberius' estate, called Villa Jovis. But Capri instantly releases visitors from the throes of all the history and art imbibed on the way here. Most people arrive and simply set themselves free to wander the narrow walkways, browse in the elegant boutiques and ceramic shops, eat gelato, look at the spectacular vistas everywhere, and breathe Capri's fresh perfumed air.

Lodging

Don't arrive between June and September without a reservation for the island's limited accommodations because cruise ships, the wealthy, and ordinary folk all amass here in summer. The only five-star hotel in Capri is the Grand Hotel Quisisana, pure elegance where 215 rooms and 25 suites overlook the sea below. Have an aperitif on the Quisisana terrace before dinner just for the luxe of it, and for the fun of sitting with the famous and the pampered and watching all the visitors and locals on their passegiata. Or visit the Quisi bar with evening piano and entertainment. The hotel is owned and run by the Morgano family, which also owns two small four-star hotels: the 30-room La Scalinatella and the 26-room Casa Morgano next door, just exquisitely renovated and overlooking breathtaking cliff-side beauty.

Having made a mistake in lodgings on my first visit, I subsequently discovered the dream hotel named Casa Morgano and came back for a brief sojourn. Manager Nick Morgano is one of the three grown Morgano sons who is a hotelier by birth and training. The Morgano family has been in the hotel business for the past 60 years, perfecting the art of service, comfort and cuisine. Everything you could want is in the beautiful Casa Morgano, with its spectacular setting above the sea, its lush plantings, its multi-levels and privacy, its grand marble bathrooms and sprawling sitting room/bedrooms with sliding doors that lead to large personal terraces. Its common terraces overhanging the cliff for havens for reading, chatting or having libations, and its poolside restaurant welcomes guests and visitors alike for the fresh seafood and other specialties. Casa Morgano guests get to use all the facilities at the Quisisana, including the tennis courts, the fitness center, and the indoor and outdoor pools with poolside buffet and grill.

Food

Although bottled water costs twice what it does elsewhere in Italy, and expensive and charming first-rate restaurants abound, you have less costly options. There is Giorgio's, near the Piazzetta, with indoor and outdoor seating. all overlooking the Bay of Naples. A delicious primo piatto of pasta will cost only $7 or $8 here. Giorgio's ceramic dishes and pitchers are custom-made for the restaurant in Vietri, and you will find yourself wanting to own each piece with a fish hand-painted on its surface. For lunch, you can also go the non-restaurant route by taking the left walkway from the Piazzetta, where one alimentari after another is lined up. They are open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and again from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., and they will make you terrific sandwiches from prosciutto crudo or cotto, or salami, or mortadella. Or how about the wonderful caprese cheese – a cross between mozzarella and ricotta – loaded up on a rosetta with slices of sun-ripened local tomatoes? Before you leave, try and then buy a bottle of limoncello, the island's aperitif and digestif, made from the zest of lemons, and more delicious here than elsewhere.

Excursion Boats

If there are too many tour groups clustered in the Piazzetta, at the Villa Jovis, or the Giardino di Agosto, just do what the Capreses do, and get onto the smaller byways. Or if the seas are calm, take an excursion around the island to see the red grotto and the white one, and gaze at uncanny rock formations and millionaires' homes that can only be observed from the sea or sky. There is much etymological disagreement about the origin of the island's name. Heretofore, Capri was thought to come from the Latin word capra, meaning goat. Then, the archaeologists found the fossil remains of wild boars, suggesting that the Greek word kapros, meaning boar, was its origin. Finally, there are the advocates of the Etruscan word capr, for rock. As you ride around the island on a motorboat, you would opt for the Etruscan.

How to Swim in Capri

A "beach" on the island of Capri is any narrow strip of rocks from which you can swim without having to dive or jump off a cliff. Without a private boat, options for swimming in Capri include hotel pools, the more ample beach of sand and pebbles at the port of Marina Grande, replete with fuel scum from yacht and hydrofoil, or Marina Piccola, a short bus ride or a long winding walk from the Piazzetta. We walked, missing the hidden access to a zillion steps directly down to what Frommer calls "the major beach." Actually, it was a teeny, tiny, rocky incline to the water, where people were shoulder to shoulder as they stretched out on their towels, though we were a whole month ahead of high season.

There were one or two restaurants which, for a fee, provided chairs and towels, but the best deal was a fine little promontory of rocks strewn with flat concrete slabs holding beach chairs, plus a ladder down to the sea, all for $12. The legacy of aristocracy prevails on European beaches, and if you want a tranquil spot, it will cost, separating the haves from the have-nots. I stayed shoulder to shoulder among the peons until late day, when the private enclave began to empty out, then swam over to their ladder and enjoyed the still strong sun in comfort and style.

A better option, and not an advertised one, is to make your way from the center of Capri to the Via Tragara, and walk to the Faraglioni, then descend the interminable cliff-side steps to the sea. Awaiting you are two lovely waterfront restaurants. Pick one, eat lunch, sunbathe on their lounges, and go down their ladder to the clearest and cleanest water, staring ahead at the giant signature rocks of Capri, the rocks of the sirens where the legendary blue lizards are – or once were, since I never saw one.

Another swim option is to take the bus to Anacapri and the entrance to the Blue Grotto. Just above the entrance is the Bagno Nettuna, at Via Grotta Azzurra, 42. The drama of the jagged lava rocks and the plunge to the sea, plus lunch, a swimming pool, cabana towels and deck chairs is a good deal. Just below this is another garden restaurant, without a pool but with a great lobster lunch and levels of cabana chairs on the private rocky ledges so you can sun contentedly and, if you dare, jump into the sea below.

Getting to Anacapri

On my first of two visits to the island of Capri this summer, I decided to stay far from the madding crowd in pretty, pretty Anacapri, a word which means "over Capri." And that is a precise description of this postcard town, three kilometers above, reaching precariously into the sky.

We took the local bus up and up, and still impossibly up, hairpin turn by hairpin turn on a narrow road hewn into rock in 1874 and restored in 1923. If the ride up or down is uneventful (when two small buses pass, there is barely an inch to spare), then you will have been privy to one spectacular view after another across the sea towards Naples and Sorrento. The same bus ride at night is an unforgettable golden glitter of lights across the Bay of Naples.

Before there was a road, there were more than 800 steps – called the Scalina Fenicia – between Marina Grande and Anacapri, carved into the escarpment around 2,000 years ago. Though crumbling and impassable, you can see them crossing the road at one point, and you can always see them when you look skyward from the harbor or from Capri. And they always seem to challenge you to scale them. In fact, except for the area around the central piazza, Anacapri's steepness is a perpetual challenge.

One way to turn it into joy is to take the chairlift for an ascent of Monte Solaro at 1,955 feet. After a long period spent defying the guide books which didn't know it was closed, the chairlift finally opened again in June of 1999. On a clear day, the 15-minute ride, available from 9:30 a.m. until sunset, offers a panorama extending over the gulfs of Naples and Salerno to the Ponziane Islands, the Apennines, and the mountains of Calabria. Since I put bungee jumping and solo chairlifts in the same category, I didn't bother to be airborne, but my daughter, who ascended here in 1993, champions the ride.

Anacapri is clean and fresh and lush, with olive trees, lemon trees and vineyards. Five minutes from its center is the 18th century church of San Michele, with its hand-painted floor of majolica tiles following Adam and Eve around the Garden of Eden and then out of the earthly paradise upon expulsion. The elegant publishing house of Franco Maria Ricci has devoted an entire folio to the floors of San Michele, but most visitors don't even know about the floor.

Restaurants are far less expensive in Anacapri, and I was most happily fed at Il Solitario for about $15. Even eating all four courses with wine could not have cost more than $40. Enter the trattoria through a long narrow walkway under trellises and arrive at the vine-covered, sculpture-laden, hideaway garden restaurant. Excellent pizza ($7) emerged from the family's wood-burning oven. They serve the best insalata caprese – with local buffalo mozzarella and local tomatoes and basil – and insalata di mare with squid, prawns and other freshly caught fish. Abundant clams and mussels in a garlic sauté ($8) are utterly tender and more scrumptious than any at home.

When we left the restaurant around 11:30 p.m., Anacapri was pretty much closed down except for one night spot. The outside was home to a gelateria, but a sign announced dancing inside, where the space was large, with high ceilings, mirrored walls, a lowered dance floor, seating around the edges, standing space with a railing to watch the dancers a few feet below, and a congenial bar. The music was 30's, 40's, 50's, and so were the dancers. Raffaello and Paolo, our 20-year-old born-and-bred-in-Anacapri "guides" were proud of their dance hall, explaining how, every Saturday, the town chooses to forego disco for the senior citizens' night.

Right out of Fellini. The tall skinny gentleman with the jutting chin and the grace of Fred Astaire; the little one, all wrinkled but twinkling with his toothless grin, his body shedding 60 years as he moved effortlessly to the rhythms; the suave one who took your breath away with his dancing feet but who never smiled. Though the night was hot, the men were brushed and combed, and their shirts carefully starched and pressed, and the women were refined and gracious as they glided, coupled and wordless, into a distant past, dance after dance after dance.

The Blue Grotto

The famous Blue Grotto, or Grotta Azzurra, is located on the north coast of the island, and can be approached by land from the heights of Anacapri. The only other way, and certainly the most popular excursion on the island, is by boat from the arrival area of Marina Grande. But this route is fraught with tourist traps.

For starters, in Marina Grande, all the signs tell you that you will pay a fixed amount of lire to go to the Blue Grotto. The price sounds reasonable for the total experience, so people pay and board the boat. About 70 yards from the entrance to the Blue Grotto, things get unreasonable. You're there, but you're not yet in the cave. Little dinghies row out to the larger boat and, for a price, take a maximum of four passengers to the entrance to the grotto. Here, a sign is posted with the “Grotta Azzurra Museum” entry price of L18,000, or about $11 more per person. And then the cynical boatmen deliver a pat line in English or French or German or Japanese that goes, “The cost of the entry to the beautiful Grotta Azzurra is 18,000 lira. If I sing to you, you will give me a 10,000 lira tip. OK, yes? We go in? Of course!”

If it weren't for the magnificence of the glimpse of cerulean blue that Mother Nature designed here, you'd be a fool to step in the first boat.

But the sight is not to be missed. There is one other way, which I took. From Anacapri, take a bus or walk the 45 minutes downhill to the cliff-side entry point. That saves the first and second boat fees, and you pay only the “museum” fee. Each boat remains in the grotto for about five to seven minutes, swarming in the cave with about 15 other boats, with tourists' enthusiastic flashbulbs and vocal reverberations contradicting the reflective silence one somehow expects.

If you come before 9 a.m. or after 5 or 6 p.m. when the boats cease operations, you are allowed to swim in. A caution, however, about the descent by ladder against some sharp rocks, about tides and currents, and about your swimming ability and strength. Always take a swimming buddy or a watcher as the place is deserted without the boats, and make use of the chain hanging across the low (1 meter) and narrow – and wild – entrance. Remember that strong north or east winds make entrance to the cave dangerous or impossible, even for the boats.

Now, about the ineffable cobalt blue. The light effects are best on a sunny day between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.. Some books say until 3 p.m., but I was inside at 2 p.m. on a sunny day in May, and I think 1 p.m. is accurate. The grotto's geologic formation comes from the gradual subsidence of the coast to 15 or 20 meters below sea level, and was discovered in 1822 by a Capri fisherman who showed it to a German writer in 1826, and it took off as a "wonder" from there. The sun's rays cannot enter the cave directly but come through the waters as refracted light. When I was inside, the silvery glow of what lies beneath the surface was minimal, and only a small section in the front of the 180-foot cave was lit in magical blue, but what a magical blue.