Capri: The Island That Has Always Been Worth It

Capri has been the object of intelligent desire for two thousand years. The limestone cliffs, the emerald water, the piazzetta at six in the evening: none of it disappoints. The question is only how to experience it with the access and the privacy that the island, at its best, actually offers.

The problem that most visitors have with Capri is not that it is over-rated — it isn't — but that the standard visit, concentrated in the summer months when the island is at its most crowded and conducted at a pace determined by ferry schedules and queue management, does not produce an encounter with the place equal to the encounter that its physical beauty and cultural history make possible. Capri requires time, a private boat, access to the early morning and a sense of the island's own rhythm — which is not the rhythm of the day-tripper programme but the rhythm of a place that has been extraordinary for two thousand years and is in no hurry to demonstrate it. We design Capri programmes around these requirements.

The first view of the island from the sea — approaching from the south, the limestone faraglioni rising from the emerald water off the eastern cape, the white buildings of Anacapri visible on the upper plateau above the sheer cliff face — sets a standard of visual drama that the island maintains throughout. We arrange private helicopter transfers from Naples, Rome or the Amalfi Coast that deliver clients to the helipad above Anacapri, with the first view over the island and the Bay of Naples simultaneously, or private luxury launches from Positano or Sorrento that approach the island by its southern face — the most dramatic approach, past the sea stacks and the Green Grotto — before entering the Marina Grande.

The Blue Grotto: One Specific Hour

The Grotta Azzurra — on the north-western coast of the island, its entrance visible as a small dark gap in the limestone cliff just above the waterline — is accessible only by rowing boat, in sea conditions that allow an entrance of sixty centimetres clearance, and produces its defining optical effect only in the hours when the angle of the sun through the underwater passage is precisely correct for the refraction of light through forty metres of water into the blue of electric, supernatural intensity that has been described by everyone who has entered it since its rediscovery in 1826. The optimal conditions coincide, typically, with the first two hours of the morning. We arrange private rowing boat access to the Grotta at the appropriate hour, before the tourist boats begin their rotation, for the experience of the interior in conditions of genuine silence and natural light.

The Piazzetta and the Art of the Aperitivo

The Piazza Umberto I — universally and correctly called the Piazzetta — is one of the finest small stages in Italy for the specific performance of being somewhere beautiful in appropriate company. Fourteen café tables, four establishments, a clock tower, a church facade and an audience that has included, at various points in the past seventy years, every significant figure in post-war European film, literature, politics and social life: the Piazzetta is a place where the correct approach is to arrive at six in the evening, order with appropriate unhurriedness and remain until the light has gone. We reserve the right table, at the right hour, through our long-standing relationships with the island's establishments, and we do not recommend arriving before five-thirty or after eight. The aperitivo hour on the Capri piazzetta is a specific, irreplaceable experience that has been conducted at this particular address since the 1950s and that shows every sign of continuing indefinitely.

Villa Jovis, Anacapri and the Villa San Michele

The Villa Jovis — Tiberius's principal Capri residence, a vast palace complex on the island's north-eastern promontory at 354 metres — is reached by a forty-five-minute walk through rock-cut gardens and past Roman cisterns whose engineering precision is visible in the regularity of the cut-stone linings. The walk, the ruins and the views from the summit — over the Bay of Naples to Vesuvius, north to the Amalfi Coast, south to the Sicilian sea on clear days — justify the effort entirely. In Anacapri, the Villa San Michele — built by the Swedish physician Axel Munthe between 1896 and 1910 on the site of a Tiberian villa — combines Roman antiquities incorporated into the garden architecture with the most completely personal domestic museum in the island, and with a terrace view over the Marina Grande and the Bay of Naples that has been considered, since Munthe first opened it to visitors, among the finest on the island. For accommodation, we work with the Grand Hotel Quisisana, the Capri Tiberio Palace and the most exclusive private villas available to a single party, with uninterrupted sea views and the island's most complete version of the Capri experience.

The Blue Grotto at six in the morning, before any tourist boat has arrived, in a rowing boat that fits through the entrance with a clearance of sixty centimetres — the blue that appears inside is unlike any other blue available in Italy, or possibly anywhere.

The Essentials

Best season: May–June and September–October; the island is magnificent in winter for those who want it to themselves

Signature experience: Private Blue Grotto access at dawn; piazzetta reserved table at aperitivo hour; Villa Jovis with a Roman historian

Stay: Grand Hotel Quisisana, Capri Tiberio Palace, or a private villa available exclusively to one party

Combine with: Amalfi Coast (30 min by private launch), Pompeii, Paestum

Every journey we design is entirely bespoke — crafted around your preferences,your pace, and your desire for the exceptional.

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