Capri is small enough to cross on foot and varied enough to fill several days. This page starts at the port and the Piazzetta, walks to the villas and the old charterhouse of Capri town, climbs to Anacapri, and ends at sea level, with the boat trips that circle the island.
Capri lies across the water from Punta Campanella, the tip of the Sorrento peninsula that comes closest to the island. Its nature is unusual for such a small place: the island's flora includes a wide range of endemic and rare species, and one of the Faraglioni is the only home of a famous blue lizard.
Boats come into the port of Marina Grande, and from there a funicular climbs to the Piazzetta of Capri. Look at the walls around the upper station: together with the Phoenician Stairway, they hold the only remains of the Greek period still visible on the island. In the 7th and 6th centuries BC, a zigzag path climbed almost straight up from the port of Marina Grande to the acropolis below Mount Solaro, with steps partly cut into the rock in the Greek way.
Villa Lysis, built in 1904 by the Parisian nobleman Jacques d'Adelswärd Fersen, can only be reached on foot: the climb from the Piazzetta takes about 45 minutes, and the villa looks out over the bay of Marina Grande and the Gulf of Naples. Villa Malaparte, conceived by the writer Curzio Malaparte and built between 1938 and 1940 on a steep, narrow headland, is a private house; you can only admire it from outside, from the Pizzolungo path or from the sea.
The Certosa di San Giacomo, built between 1371 and 1374 by Giacomo Arcucci, is the island's most important building from the Angevin period, and since July 2024 it has been home to the national archaeological museum of Capri. A few steps from the Piazzetta, the Gardens of Augustus take in the bay of Marina Piccola, Via Krupp and the Faraglioni at a single glance; they grew out of the estate that the German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp bought in the early 1900s.
In Anacapri, the Casa Rossa was built between 1876 and 1899 beside a 15th-century tower by John Clay MacKowen, an American colonel from New Orleans. Today it has a picture gallery, and a multimedia route tells the story of the Blue Grotto, where the statues kept in its museum were found. The baroque church of San Michele Arcangelo went up between 1698 and 1719. Mount Solaro, at 589 m (1,932 ft) the highest point on Capri, can be climbed on foot or by the chairlift that starts near Piazza Vittoria, and its wildlife includes endemic and rare species.
Villa San Michele was the home of the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe. Built on the ruins of an old chapel dedicated to Saint Michael, it now belongs to the Axel Munthe Foundation and is a museum. On a rocky spur almost above the Blue Grotto, about thirty minutes' walk from the centre of Anacapri, lie the ruins of Villa Damecuta, one of the twelve villas that Emperor Tiberius built on the island; its remains line a panoramic walk facing the coast, next to a small late-medieval lookout tower.
The Blue Grotto, in the municipality of Anacapri, has an opening partly under the sea and is visited in small boats when the tides and the weather allow: you go in lying down in a rowing boat, under an arch only one metre high, and the bright blue comes from sunlight that filters through the opening and reflects off the sandy floor. In Roman times it was a sumptuous nymphaeum, and the statues of Neptune, two Tritons and a female figure found there between 1964 and 1975 are now in the archaeological museum at the Certosa. The Faraglioni, three rocky peaks off the south-east of the island, are the other classic sight from the water: the Faraglione di Terra, joined to the land, the Faraglione di Mezzo and the Faraglione di Fuori, which juts out towards the open sea. Most boat trips around the island leave from Marina Grande. A boat tour of the caves and the Faraglioni or a sunset cruise past caves and coves covers both; with a boat to yourself, there is a private trip to hidden coves, a private tour with time to snorkel or a private outing to the Blue Grotto and quieter spots.
Travellers staying on the mainland can join a full-day guided tour from Naples or a full-day boat tour from Sorrento.
Every trip that starts or stops here is also listed on the destination page.
Take the funicular from Marina Grande.
No, it is a private house; the view from Via del Pizzolungo is the closest you get.
It reaches 589 m (1,932 ft), and a chairlift goes up from Anacapri.
In 1904; Jacques d'Adelswärd Fersen had it built.
On the Anacapri side of the island, and you get there by boat.
