Grotta di Matermania
Capri
Hidden gemNature & hiking
The story
A great cave that the Romans turned into a nymphaeum, with niches and traces of stucco facing the dawn, perhaps consecrated to the Magna Mater from which it takes its name.
Access
FREE (path)
More gems in Capri
History & archaeologyVilla Jovis
Capri
On the highest, loneliest point of the island, the ruins of the villa from which Tiberius ruled the empire for ten years, among cisterns, terraces and the emptiness of the sea all around.
- Views & panoramas
Salto di Tiberio
Capri
The sheer cliff beside Villa Jovis, from which legend says Tiberius had those who betrayed him thrown into the sea: three hundred metres of void beneath your feet.
CastlesVilla Lysis (Fersen)
Capri
Built in 1905 by the poet Fersen and dedicated to love and to sorrow, an Art Nouveau villa among the pines, with a Latin inscription at the entrance and the opium room hidden below.
Nature & hikingArco Naturale
Capri
An arch of rock suspended among the holm oaks, sheer above the sea, all that remains of an ancient collapsed cave, at the end of a path above Matermania.
- Nature & hiking
Pizzolungo
Capri
The path that runs along the hillside among the myrtle bushes, passing beneath Malaparte's house until it opens onto the Faraglioni seen from above.
- Views & panoramas
Belvedere di Tragara
Capri
At the end of the lane lined with villas and bougainvillea, the terrace where the Faraglioni line up perfectly, three rocks rising from the blue like the island's signature.
More gems: Nature & hiking
Nature & hikingOrto Botanico
via Foria
Founded in the Napoleonic age, the botanical garden on via Foria lines up glasshouses, palms and rare species across twelve hectares: a green breath a step away from the traffic.
- Nature & hiking
Pedamentina di San Martino
Vomero→centro
A fourteenth-century stairway dropping from the hill of San Martino down to the city: hundreds of steps through vegetable plots, gardens and glimpses of the bay — one of the finest urban paths in Naples.
- Nature & hiking
Vigna di San Martino
collina S. Martino
One of the largest urban vineyards in Europe, worked by the Carthusians since the fourteenth century: seven hectares of vines, citrus and olive trees hanging over the bay, a step from the city's chaos.
Nature & hikingVilla Comunale
Riviera di Chiaia
The garden stretched out along the sea at Chiaia: avenues of holm oaks, benches and old statues, with the gulf breathing beyond the iron railing.
- Nature & hiking
Acquario Anton Dohrn
Riviera di Chiaia
The oldest aquarium in Europe, opened in 1874 inside the Villa Comunale: historic tanks inhabited only by the fauna of the Gulf of Naples, behind the glass.
Nature & hikingSolfatara
Pozzuoli
The ground breathes: hissing fumaroles, mud that boils up and a smell of sulphur reminding you how alive the earth is beneath the Campi Flegrei.