Most people who cross the Gulf of Naples to Capri spend the journey looking ahead, at the island. The better view, for the first quarter of an hour, is behind and to the right.

Off the cliffs of Posillipo, a few minutes after leaving the harbour, lie the two rocks of the Isola della Gaiola, joined by a narrow natural arch. Under the water around them are the edges of Pausilypon, the villa that Publius Vedius Pollio built in the first century BC and left to the emperor Augustus. Its quays, fishponds and nymphaea are now below the waterline.

The sea did not rise to cover them.

The land sank. This stretch of coast is bradyseismic: the ground slowly lifts and falls over the centuries, and whole Roman waterfronts in the gulf went down with it. Since 2002 the area has been a marine protected area, the Parco Sommerso di Gaiola. Neapolitans still call the larger islet l'isola maledetta, the cursed island, for reasons that belong to the twentieth century rather than to Rome.

Capri itself was imperial property before it was a destination.

Suetonius records that Augustus obtained the island from Naples in exchange for Ischia, and Tiberius spent the last decade of his reign there. Strabo thought Capri had once been joined to the mainland, and from the water you can see why: the island reads as a piece of the Sorrento peninsula that drifted off and stood up.

That is why the crossing deserves to be treated as part of the day, not as transport. A scheduled ferry has no reason to slow down past Gaiola or to take the long way round the Faraglioni. A boat that sets its own route and pace can do both.

We wrote the full crossing, from the Naples shore to the island, together with an operator who makes it every day:

A private boat from Naples to Capri: the crossing, and what you pass on the way

https://culturalheritageonline.com/magazine/private-boat-naples-to-capri-crossing/

And for the places themselves:

Isola della Gaiola, Posillipo — the island of the sunken villas

https://culturalheritageonline.com/places/isola-della-gaiola-posillipo-naples/

Faraglioni di Capri

https://culturalheritageonline.com/places/faraglioni-di-capri/

Cultural Heritage Online documents heritage places with their history, sources and exact location.

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Cover: the arch of the Isola della Gaiola, Posillipo. Photo: Gianfranco Vitolo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.