Amalfi Coast · the island of the dolce vita
Capri
An island of white cliffs and lemon light that emperors, then movie stars, made the most glamorous escape in the Mediterranean.
Capri has been the beautiful escape for two thousand years. The emperor Tiberius ran Rome from a villa on its cliffs; in the 1950s and ’60s the island became the summer stage of the dolce vita, where Jackie Kennedy shopped for sandals, Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot sunned off the rocks, and the yachts anchored below the Piazzetta. Whitewashed lanes, the blue of the grotto, the twin Faraglioni stacks rising straight from the sea. It earns the reputation.
By day it can feel like the whole Bay of Naples arrived at once. Cruise crowds and day-trippers pour off the boats into the same few lanes, prices run Positano-plus, and the Blue Grotto is a queue as much as a wonder. But the day boats leave by evening and the island exhales: the Piazzetta softens, the lanes empty, and the old magic comes back. Stay the night, or come in the shoulder, and you get the Capri people fall for.
Best months
May–Jun · Sep
Stay
2–4 nights
Arrive
Ferry from Naples or Sorrento
The one thing
The Piazzetta at dusk
Daily feel
Glamorous, and priced like it
A perfect day
morning to midnight, the romantic cut
Morning
Beat the boats to the Blue Grotto. A rowboat slips you through a mouth barely a metre high into a cave lit electric blue from below. Back for coffee in the Piazzetta, the little café square Capri calls the theatre of the world.
Midday
A boat around the island, under the arch of the Faraglioni stacks, past Casa Malaparte’s red cube on its point, a swim off the back, and lunch at a rock-side table down at Marina Piccola.
Afternoon
Up to Anacapri, the calmer upper town: the chairlift to Monte Solaro for the whole bay at your feet, then Villa San Michele, the doctor Axel Munthe’s garden of white loggias and a marble sphinx over the sea.
Evening
The Gardens of Augustus for the Faraglioni at golden hour, then back to the Piazzetta for an aperitivo once the day boats have gone. The island at its best.
What to eat
the dishes, and the tables worth the trouble
Insalata caprese
Tomato, mozzarella, basil, oil. The salad the island gave the world. Only as good as its tomatoes, which here are very good.
Ravioli capresi
Little pasta pillows of caciotta cheese and marjoram in a light tomato sauce. The island’s own, on every proper menu.
Torta caprese
A flourless chocolate-and-almond cake, born here by happy accident. Dense, dark, and dusted white.
Limoncello
The lemon liqueur, poured ice-cold after dinner. A whole terraced hillside in a small glass.
The Capri look
how a little island dressed the world
Capri didn’t just wear the look. It named it. In 1945 a designer christened her trousers “Capri,” for the island she’d fallen for, then cut them short and tight after a walk on its beach. The boutiques here and the stars who summered on the island, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe among them, turned the Capri pant into a global uniform.
The rest of the island’s style was born the same way. Emilio Pucci opened one of his first boutiques here around 1950, and his kaleidoscope prints became Capri’s summer skin. Down by the water, sandal-makers have cut leather to your foot since the 1940s. Jackie Kennedy took a pair home and made them famous. Today Via Camerelle is a row of the big names: Gucci, Prada, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana. But the island originals are still the ones worth the suitcase space.
The names to know
The kaleidoscope prints that became Capri’s summer uniform, from the label the island made famous.
Handmade leather sandals, cut to your foot on Via Camerelle since 1946.
The workshop that shod Jackie O and half of Hollywood. Made to measure while you wait.
The Piazzetta boutique that dressed Jackie in Capri pants, and still sells them.
The luxury row runs along Via Camerelle and Via Vittorio Emanuele; the island originals are tucked in the lanes around the Piazzetta.
“First the emperors, then the movie stars. For two thousand years, Capri has been the most glamorous way to disappear.”
The bucket list
the things you came for, each one opens
If you do one thing
Miss the last day boat on purpose. When the crowds pour back down to the marina and the island goes still, the Piazzetta becomes a village square again, and Capri, for a few gold hours, is yours.
Know before you go
the practical, tucked into drop-downs
No cars for visitors, and no bridge. You come by ferry or hydrofoil from Sorrento, Naples, or Salerno and the coast in season. From Marina Grande the funicular climbs to the Piazzetta; small buses and open taxis link Capri town, Anacapri, and the marinas. It’s a walking island: flat shoes, and expect steps.
May, June, and September are the island at its best: warm, swimmable, and a notch less frantic. July and August are hot, dear, and mobbed, August most of all. Winter is calm and half-closed, lovely in its bare way but with little open. Whenever you come, the crowds thin the moment the last day boat pulls out.
Capri town, around the Piazzetta, is the glamour and the noise: boutiques, bars, and the crowds by day. Anacapri, higher up, trades the scene for calm, space, and lower prices, with the Monte Solaro chairlift at hand. Staying anywhere on the island means you get the evenings, which are the whole point. The rent band sits on the coast overview.
Augustus fell for Capri and swapped a bigger island to keep it; Tiberius ruled the Roman Empire from a dozen villas here for the last ten years of his life. Much later the island drew its writers and eccentrics: Axel Munthe, Norman Douglas, Graham Greene, and Pablo Neruda, who wrote his love poems here in exile. Then came the 1950s: Capri pants, Pucci prints, and a jet set that turned the little Piazzetta into the most famous café in Europe. The glamour is real, and so is the history under it.
Capri on the map
More info: the whole trip in one place