The Ile of Capri

Castell Nuova, near the Naples boat dock

We are off to Capri - in just over an hour from waking - after a brisk walk through the clear, wintry Naples morning, past marble fountains and piles of waking homeless. Now we lurch against the muscular Mediterranean, in a boat cabin like that of an airplane, with morning news shows chatting away from drop down screens. Among rainbows of sea spray Capri looms, its mysterious silhouette blackened by the brilliant sun.

We arrive against the iconic cliff sides topped with green, gulls gliding. But the storefront cafes at the Marina are watchful and grasping, eyes out for tourist money. We take the funicular up into the town, all high end shops scrubbed clean for tourists, like Costa Smeralda in Sardinia. Barely a simple coffee to be had. The original medieval church has been improved upon beyond recognition. American, Japanese and Chinese tour groups drift up past the Carthusian perfume factories. The same monastic order we visited in the lofty Vomero district has, here, developed perfume, sold in shops that feature photos of Jackie Kennedy. The garden Augustinian has plunging views of the thundering sea. It was donated by the Nazi supporter Krupp, who also built the pathways beneath. There is a statue of Lenin, who was Gorky's guest on the island. All you see in this area is hotels, beautifully folded into the rocky heights, including the Krupps hotel.

Pathways by Krupps

Carthusian Monastery

Below is the Carthusian Monastery, medieval with its lumpy, Jerusalem-like roofs. It is now a lycee---we see students doing jumping jacks under the arches of the cloister. We make our way down into the monastery, which preserves only traces of fresco in the chapel, its dusty undecorated halls mostly closed. The overgrown gardens are also closed. The monastery is an empty husk that no one in this wealthy island thought to keep up.

Villa Jovis

So we walk east to the Villa of Tiberius, an uphill hike past neglected Roman-like gardens, some being worked on, villas and vineyards, real people with shopping carts among the tumultuous cypresses, past charming neglect and ostentatious luxury, to the ruin of the Emperor Tiberius' main villa (among his twelve on the island) where he spent the last ten years of his long life (79 years) going mad.

Villa Jovis

Villa Jovis

The stoic soldier and heir to the great Augustus Caesar had ruled as a close-mouthed steward of Rome, living in the city and attending the senate, until he decided to install himself on the beautiful Capri. The two great historians of the era, Tacitus and Suetonius, dispute whether the seeds of his madness were evident earlier in his imperial reign. Tacitus goes to great length to show Tiberius as a vicious, vengeful ruler from the start, who kept secret lists of his enemies and indulged extensively in judicial murders. Both agree that the last ten years of his life were pure terror for the Romans, the bodies piling up, informants dredging up crimes at a frenzied pace. For example, one woman was executed for mourning her son. Previous friends of executed Romans were cut down en masse. Cabals and conspiracies were so out of control that many respectable and innocent Romans simply committed suicide, often by starving themselves, to avoid the inevitable. This was orchestrated from Capri, where Tiberius lived a life of continual orgies, mainly with children procured especially for their looks. He invited many astrologers to the island, where they were led, blindfolded, up secret muddy paths. If he found them insufficient, which was true of all but one, they were thrown off the cliffs on the way down.

The informational placards of the actual Villa Jovis gloss over the wanton reputation of the Villa, and instead point out an imposing layout of which today only partially resurrected multi-colored brick remains. The picturesque walls shear away to the treetops and sky, with the silent Mediterranean far below.

Near the Blue Grotto

From there we take a hidden trail that dropped and rose muddily and stonily--said to be the original entrance to the villa, now a protected sentier among unique fauna and flora overlooking deep coves in the sea. To the northeast is the Villa of Lysis, an early 20th c neo-Grecian temple of Capri high society--"refined, subtle, negative, subversive, pagan" wrote Roger Peyrefitte. Through the forest still, but now on paved pathways between villa walls, we hike back to the town of Capri, and take the little orange bus to the other town, Anacapri. As the little bus swerves over steep cliffs the locals cross themselves, the bus driver miraculously avoiding the well-fed local evidently stray dogs, and getting us to the historical center of Anacapri.

Anacapri features some historical sites which are all closed, including the bizarre Casa Rossa, a Moroccan style kasbah with garish Native American decor, which nonetheless houses valuable art. It was built by an American Confederate colonel who comforted himself after the Civil War defeat with his Caprican wife. Restaurants and shops are closed. But Santa Sofia, an originally Byzantine church, is open, next to a restaurant that agrees to prepare two salads for us, the only customers of the day. Another bus takes us to the famous Blue Grotto, closed because of rough seas, say the fishermen who were using beautiful little wide-eyed red fish for bait. An affectionate mutt bursting with life comes up for a caress then takes off after a man on a motorino--his master? His friend? We wait for the return bus just above the sea, walking on wave-washed rocks in the dying afternoon sun, Sorrento and Naples hazy pink. On the return bus, a tall horse-toothed man with a glittering smile hails the bus--we both immediately identify him as a priest, unctuous and aggressively friendly to the ladies in the bus.

Caesar Augustus

In Anacapri a rough stone stairway, La Scala Fenicia, descends straight down the vertical cliff to the Marina, in switchbacks. It was the only pathway from Greek times to the late 19th c. It plunges over vegetable crops, through a forest and beneath the very turns in the highway where bus passengers had crossed themselves, till figures playing soccer in the stadium by the sea become visible, and the entry ways of villas and simpler houses light the stone vicoletto. The way leads right down to the Marina. A cold hour later we are on the boat back to Napoli.