Capri Italy Highlights: The Places Worth Your Hours
Capri is 10.4 square kilometres, and almost everything people come for sits on the edge of it. What follows is one entry per named place, each with the same four answers: what it is, what it costs, how you get there and how long to give it. Half of them are only really seen from the water. Four of these are only really seen from the sea, which is what the private boat tours in Capri are for.
The Blue Grotto
What it is: a sea cave on the north-west shore whose water glows because the daylight enters below the surface and comes up through it. August Kopisch brought it back into European attention in 1826; the Romans had used it long before that.
What it costs: €18 a head arriving on a tour boat — €12 for the rowboat that takes you in and €6 for the entry — paid in cash at the floating ticket office at the cave mouth. Arriving alone from Marina Grande adds the €24 public motorboat. Entry is €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25 and free under 18.
How you reach it: by boat from Marina Grande, or by bus from Anacapri in about twenty minutes and then down the steps to the same floating office. Either way the last stretch is a rowboat: the opening is about two metres wide and a metre high, so everyone lies flat to get through.
How long it needs: five minutes inside and anything from twenty minutes to two and a half hours queueing for them. It opens at 9am and shuts between 2pm and 6pm depending on the season, and it closes altogether whenever the swell makes the transfer unsafe.
Only two of the trips listed here put that admission inside the fare. The Blue Grotto tours page sets out which, and what happens on the ones that do not.
The Faraglioni
What it is: three limestone stacks standing off the south-east coast. Stella, 109 m, is still joined to the cliff; Faraglione di Mezzo, 82 m, carries the arch boats sail through; and Scopolo, 106 m, is home to a blue lizard, Podarcis siculus coeruleus, that lives on that rock and nowhere else.
What it costs: nothing to look at. Every boat trip listed here passes them, and most anchor for a swim in the deep water beside them.
How you reach it: by boat for the arch, or on foot to the Belvedere di Tragara for the view from above — about fifteen minutes' walk from the Piazzetta and free.
How long it needs: twenty to thirty minutes on the water, which is what most swim stops run to. The arch takes a minute to pass through and is the photograph everybody is after.
Monte Solaro
What it is: the island's summit at 589 m, above Anacapri, with the whole Bay of Naples on one side and the open Tyrrhenian on the other.
What it costs: €14 for the chairlift return, €11 one way, free under 8. The footpath costs nothing.
How you reach it: a single-seat chairlift from Piazza Vittoria in Anacapri, twelve to thirteen minutes each way, or the path from the same square in about an hour on foot. The chairlift closes from mid-January to early February and runs 09:30 to 17:00 from May to October.
How long it needs: an hour and a quarter for the round trip with time at the top. Two hours if you walk one leg.
Villa San Michele
What it is: the house and garden the Swedish doctor and writer Axel Munthe (1857–1949) built for himself above Anacapri at the start of the twentieth century, full of the Roman fragments he collected, with a loggia looking straight down onto Marina Grande.
What it costs: €12 for adults, €8 for young people and students, free under 12.
How you reach it: a few minutes' walk from Piazza Vittoria in Anacapri, so it pairs naturally with the chairlift.
How long it needs: about an hour. Check the calendar first: it opens at 9am all year, closes anywhere between 3.30pm and 7pm depending on the month, shuts for the whole of February, and closes on Tuesdays in January, November and December.
Villa Jovis
What it is: the cliff-top villa Tiberius moved to permanently in AD 27 and governed the Roman Empire from until he died there in AD 37. It is one of the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy, and it sits 300 m above the sea at the island's north-east corner.
What it costs: €6 full price, €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, free under 18.
How you reach it: on foot from the Piazzetta, uphill, in about forty-five minutes. There is no bus to the gate.
How long it needs: two hours including the walk. Check the calendar hard: it closes on Mondays, shuts entirely in January and February, and in March opens weekends only, 10:00 to 16:00.
The Gardens of Augustus and Via Krupp
What it is: terraced gardens laid out for the German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp in the early twentieth century, known as the Krupp Gardens until they were renamed in 1918. From the far terrace you look down on Via Krupp, the hairpin footpath Krupp commissioned from the engineer Emilio Mayer and had built between 1900 and 1902, dropping about 100 m to Marina Piccola.
What it costs: €2.50, free under 12 — the cheapest paid view on the island.
How you reach it: five minutes' walk from the Piazzetta, past the Certosa. Via Krupp itself has been closed for long stretches since 1976 because of rockfall and its openings are irregular, so treat the view down onto it as the reliable part.
How long it needs: twenty minutes, and it is open from 09:30 in winter and as late as 20:00 from May to September.
Anacapri and the Piazzetta
What they are: the island's two centres, and they are not alike. Capri town sits on the saddle above Marina Grande, and its Piazzetta — properly Piazza Umberto I — is four cafes, a clock tower and the best people-watching in the Bay of Naples. Anacapri is higher, quieter and older in feel, and it is where the chairlift, Villa San Michele and the road down to the Blue Grotto all are.
What they cost: nothing. The Piazzetta charges for a coffee at a table, and the price is part of the theatre.
How you reach them: the funicular from Marina Grande to Capri town, four minutes and €2.40; the bus on to Anacapri, about fifteen minutes more.
How long they need: an hour each to walk, longer if you sit down. Most single-day visitors manage one of the two properly rather than both.
Punta Carena and the Arco Naturale
What they are: the island's two ends, in a manner of speaking. The Punta Carena lighthouse marks the south-western tip above a rocky swimming platform and the best sunset on the island. The Arco Naturale is a rock arch on the east coast, reached by a stepped path from the Piazzetta.
What they cost: nothing, either of them.
How you reach them: Punta Carena is a twenty-minute bus from Anacapri; the Arco Naturale is a walk of about thirty minutes from Capri town, downhill on the way out and up on the way back.
How long they need: half an afternoon for the lighthouse if you swim, and an hour and a half for the arch walk. Both are the sort of thing a second day on the island buys you.
What everything costs to go in
| Place | Adult | Reduced | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Grotto | €18 on a tour boat | €2 entry for EU 18–25; free under 18 | Cash, at the floating office; €42 arriving independently |
| Monte Solaro chairlift | €14 return | €11 one way; free under 8 | Closed mid-January to early February |
| Villa San Michele | €12 | €8 students; free under 12 | Closed all February and Tuesdays in winter |
| Certosa di San Giacomo | €10 | €2 for 18–25; free under 18 | Closed Mondays |
| Villa Jovis | €6 | €2 for EU 18–25; free under 18 | Closed Mondays, and all of January and February |
| Casa Rossa, Anacapri | €3.50 | €1 with a Blue Grotto or other attraction ticket | Seasonal hours |
| Gardens of Augustus | €2.50 | Free under 12 | Open from 09:30 |
| The Faraglioni, the Piazzetta, Punta Carena, the Arco Naturale | Free | — | The best of the island costs nothing |
Four of these need a boat
The Blue Grotto, the arch through the Faraglioni, the caves and the swimming coves are sea-level places. A boat trip reaches all four in an afternoon.
Fitting them together
The island divides cleanly in two, and that is the planning insight worth having, and it is the one Capri Italy Tours organises its comparison around. Everything at sea level — the grotto, the stacks, the caves, the swimming — is a boat morning. Everything above 200 m — Anacapri, Monte Solaro, Villa San Michele — is a bus and a chairlift, and that is a separate half day. The map page shows how far apart the two halves really are, and things to do takes the same places and sorts them by activity instead.
Sources
Checked on 5 September 2026. Hours, fares and timetables belong to the bodies that publish them and they change with the season. The official pages are the place to confirm before you travel.
See the half of this island that needs a hull
Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead on every trip listed here.
See Top Tours