CAPRI
campania
Sites: The Blue Grotto, Faraglioni, The Gardens of Augustus, La Piazza, Villa Jovis, Villa San Michele, Marina Grande.
THE BLUE GROTTO
The Blue Grotto has become the emblem of the island of Capri; the enchantment of this place goes back further in time, when it was well known by the Romans, as proved by the antique statues which were found in the Grotto. The lucky coincidence of geological and speological conditions has created a double enchantment. The sunlight, passing through an underwater cavity and shining through the seawater, creates a blue reflection that illuminates the cavern. To get to the Blue Grotto, there are motorboats that leave from the port of Marina Grande and that besides going round the island, stop off here. You can also get to the Grotto by bus (from Anacapri) or by taxi as, after reaching the entrance to the Grotto, you have to get into little rowing boats, that take a maximum of two or three persons, and lying on the bottom of them, you are taken through the natural narrow opening. The Grotto can't be visited during adverse weather conditions.
FARAGLIONI
These splendid geological formations undoubtedly the best known feature of the island's jagged form-hold the numerous nests of Capri's large diomedei gulls. The first outcropping ("Stella" or Star) is joined to the coast and stands 109 m. high; the second ("Di Mezzo" or Middle) is 81 m. high and has a natural tunnel roughly 60 m. in length that passes right through it, the third "faraglione" (reef) is 104 m. high and inhabited by the blue lizard (lacerta muralis coerulea), now a rare, protected specie. A fourth "faraglione", standing by itself in front of the Port of Tragara, is called the "Monacone", named after the sea lion or "Monaca" (Nun) seal that lived there until the last century. The remains of Roman structures - which actually consist of an access stairway and a tub for collecting water and raising fish - have contributed to the legend that Masgaba, the African architect of the island's Augustan buildings, was buried there.
THE GARDENS OF AUGUSTUS
These belonged to the villa of Friedrich Alfred Krupp, son of the founder of the great German steelworks, who took up residence in Capri towards the end of the last century. Built on the ruins of ancient Roman structures, the gardens were donated by Krupp to the Town of Capri, which later named them for the Roman Emperor. In a corner of the garden, a statue of Lenin by the sculptor Manzu was erected to commemorate his stay on the island.
LA PIAZZA
The "heart" of Capri is the Piazza Umberto I, a small, compact, closed-off square that resembles a courtyard. Surrounding the square are the "Torre dell'Orologio", or Clock Tower, which may have been the bell tower of the old cathedral, plus the municipal offices (located in the rooms of the bishop's residence) and a series of stores and cafès; the picturesque left side of the San Stefano church acts as a backdrop. The Piazza was probably part of the primitive inhabited area of Capri (V-IV century BC), as shown by a number of sections of wall made from limestone blocks. The blocks are visible at the ends of the funicular terrace, having been integrated in the construction of the houses and the medieval walls on the northeast side of the town together with another section of wall on the slopes of the Castiglione hill, and hill others that were destroyed in the Roman age, these blocks formed the mighty fortified perimeter of the Greek acropolis.
VILLA JOVIS
The island's largest imperial villa, it was built for Tiberius at the beginning of the I century AD and discovered in the 1700's under the Bourbon ruler Charles. The structure, built to an uncommon height, consisted of a number of different floors terraced along the natural slope of the land, with the difference from the highest to the lowest point being 40 m. The various spaces of the actual domus were laid out around a central area that held the large cisterns for gathering rain water, the sole source of drinking water and also a reserve used to supply the baths to the south. The building complex includes the Church of St. Maria del Soccorso (1700's), which is open only for the feast of the Tiberian Piedigrotta.
VILLA SAN MICHELE
Villa San Michele, the eclectic mansion situated on the top of the Phoenician stairway in Anacapri, was built by the Swedish Doctor Axel Munthe. He arrived in Capri in 1876, bought a vineyard near the ancient remains of the chapel of San Michele, from which the Villa has taken the name. The Villa has an eclectic collection and beautiful terraced gardens. The house is now a museum, owned by the Swedish Munthe Foundation and open to the public including many of the founder's possessions, including rustic and antique furniture, as well as countless archaeological artifacts, are preserved in a charming atmosphere.
MARINA GRANDE
The Marina Grande (Large Seashore) is the harbour of Capri, located in the bay on north side of the island, in front of Naples and its gulf. The harbor consists of two large arms: the western one is the former and it works as commercial port, where ferries and hydrofoils berth, while the east arm is the latter and it is occupied by the tourist port, where pleasure boats park. The commercial port was built in 1928, as an extension of a small preexisting reef. Until that moment, ferries didn't land on the seashore, but lied at anchor in the bay while passengers and goods were carried by fishermen from Marina Grande on the island with their boats, that is the technique still used nowadays for cruise ships. The tourist port had been built about thirty years ago and was initially aimed at diving the goods transport from passengers, but its function was turned to host tourist boats, whose arrivals increased enormously in last years, in such a way as they are going to approve the construction of another external arm of the port, to enlarge its capacity.
The village of Marina Grande is very old and among its renovated buildings we can see some structures and passages from previous houses, that were initially built right upon the shore, at few metres of distance from the sea. Many paintings and prints from past centuries represent Marina Grande into its original appearance, with few buildings collected in the area now comprised between the commercial port entrance and "Largo Fontana" (Fountain Square): they are very suggestive pictures showing what had seen by the first astonished tourists who came to the island. The Church of San Costanzo is on a higher place, in the district of "Aiano di Sotto". It is the most ancient catholic building on the island: as reported by the tradition, Costanzo Patriarch of Costantinople, while he was coming back home from Rome, escaped to a violent storm and landed fortunately on the isle of Capri. He interpreted his rescue as a God will and decided to settle on the island with his disciples in order to convert inhabitants to Christianity. His relics had been kept inside the church he founded and from then he has been worshipped as Patron Saint of Capri. In 987 AD the Archbishop of Amalfi created the diocese of Capri and replaced the old christian church with a new one in Byzantine style: the church of San Costanzo was seat for the Bishop of Capri until 1596, when they decided to move the seat into the new cathedral in the centre of Capri, better protected from Muslim pirates (here still called Saracens). This transfer caused the rivalry between "Capresi" (inhabitants of centre) and the "Greeks" (people from Marina Grande). Since them, even if once a year the relics of San Costanzo are carried here and kept for a week during the festivity of the Patron in May in order to recall the origin of the worship, the religious paths were definitively separated and the Marina Grande chose another Patron, the "Madonna della Libera" (Our Lady of Freedom, once again against Saracens), whose festivity is on September. Also the Church took her name in 1972.
The Byzantine church, with central symmetry, was deeply rearranged by Counts Arcucci (the family of Charterhouse's founder) in the XIV century, who enlarged the church with a high presbytery covered with a cross vault on the Southern side, and with a porch and the current facade on the opposite side. In this way they changed the traditional sense of direction of the old Christian churches (from West to the East) to an unusual disposition from North to the South. They left inside some precious columns taken from the near Roman villa, which were instead removed in the XVIII century, placed inside the Royal Palace of Caserta and replaced here with some poor copies. In the wide area near the Church of San Costanzo had been placed the Villa of Roman Emperor Octavian Augustus, the Sea Palace (that is also the name of the whole zone). Nowadays they remain only few ruins on the coastline, in a place called "Bagni di Tiberio" (Tiberius Baths), with a huge exedra and the pools for breeding fish, probably built or enlarged by Tiberius, as indicated by construction style. The nucleus of Augustus' villa was higher, in the place now occupied by the buildings of the ex-villa owned by Williams Bismark, also known as "Fortino" (Blockhouse) because it was erected upon the defences built by the French soldiers at the beginning of the XIX century, who used for militar purposes what it was left by the Bourbon archaeologists when they raped the imperial villa in the XVIII century, stealing all the precious marbles, columns and decorations.
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