Capri day trip from Naples: ferries, times, what to see

Capri makes a good day trip from Naples, as long as you don't try to see everything. Just under an hour on the hydrofoil, a funicular, a bus up to Anacapri and a bit of walking: here's how to get there, what to see in a day and what time to start thinking about the way back.

Hydrofoils and ferries from Naples: where they leave from

Boats for Capri leave from two ports in Naples, right next to each other, and it pays not to mix them up.

The ferry is slower, but it still sails when the sea is rough and the hydrofoils stay in port, and in summer you can sit out on deck. The hydrofoil saves you half an hour each way, which in a single day is a lot. Timetables change between summer and winter, with more sailings in the warmer months: check the companies' websites or the board at the ticket office the day before. All boats arrive at Marina Grande.

Capri town: the funicular, the Piazzetta, the Giardini di Augusto

Get off at Marina Grande and take the funicular: a few minutes' climb through the lemon trees and you're in Piazza Umberto I, known as the Piazzetta. Buy the ticket at the bottom station. If there's a queue, and in summer there is, you can walk up a flight of steps that gets you to the same place in a good twenty minutes.

The Piazzetta is small, with café tables and the clock tower. A coffee there costs what it costs, but you drink it watching the world go by. Then take Via Vittorio Emanuele and Via Federico Serena to the Certosa di San Giacomo, a former monastery, and the Giardini di Augusto (Gardens of Augustus): flower-filled terraces with a viewpoint over the Faraglioni, the three rock stacks that are Capri's postcard. There's an entry fee; half an hour and a short walk are enough.

Below the gardens runs Via Krupp, the hairpin path cut into the rock in the early 1900s for the German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp. It was closed for years because of the risk of rockfalls; these days it opens in the warmer months, this year from 1 April, and closes in autumn for maintenance on the cliff face. In late September and October check on the spot whether it's still open: if it is, walk down to Marina Piccola and swim in front of the Faraglioni.

Anacapri and the Monte Solaro chairlift

Anacapri is the other Capri: higher up, quieter, with white houses and fewer shop windows. You get there by bus from Capri or Marina Grande, a quarter of an hour of bends above the sea. Get off at Piazza Vittoria and you're already in the centre: the church of San Michele, with its majolica floor depicting the Garden of Eden, and Axel Munthe's Villa San Michele with its viewpoint.

The Monte Solaro chairlift also leaves from Piazza Vittoria, on Via Caposcuro. It's a dozen minutes on a single seat, feet dangling over gardens and vineyards, up to the summit at almost 600 metres. From up there you can see the whole island, the Faraglioni, the Sorrento coast and, when the air is clear, Vesuvius. In October it runs until the afternoon: if you want to do it, fit it in before lunch.

The Blue Grotto and a boat trip round the island

The Grotta Azzurra (Blue Grotto) is a sea cave on the north-west side of the island, with an opening so low that you can only get in lying flat in the bottom of a rowing boat. Inside, the light coming in under the waterline turns the sea a blue that doesn't look real. The Romans used it as a nymphaeum, a shrine to the water nymphs.

Two things to know. First: it only opens when the sea is calm. With a northerly wind the boatmen can't get in and the grotto stays shut, even in high summer, and nobody can tell you for sure the day before whether it will open. Second: you pay twice, for the state entry ticket, which you can book on the CoopCulture website, and for the little rowing boat that takes you in. From April to October the grotto opens at 9am and closes at 6pm. You get there by boat from Marina Grande or by bus from Anacapri, down to the steps where the boatmen wait.

If the grotto is closed, or the queue puts you off, a boat trip round the island is what makes the day. Boats from Marina Grande circle Capri in an hour or a little more: you pass beneath the Punta Carena lighthouse, through the arch of the Faraglioni, past the Grotta Verde and the Grotta Bianca (the Green and White Grottoes), below the cliffs of Villa Jovis. You see the island the way the emperors did, from the sea.

When to go, and how to make it easy

Capri in August is beautiful and heaving. September and October are the right months for a day trip: the sea is still warm, the paths are quieter, the restaurants are open. From November many places close and sailings are reduced, but the island is still there. In every season the wind decides: with rough seas the hydrofoils and the Blue Grotto are off, so check the forecast the night before and have a plan B.

If you'd rather not deal with ticket offices and buses, there are two ready-made days out. Capri and Anacapri by hydrofoil with the Gardens of Augustus has the hydrofoil from Naples sorted, a minibus on the island and a guide, eight hours in all. Capri by gozzo and on foot starts with an hour round the island on a gozzo, the traditional wooden boat, then Anacapri with time for the chairlift, and finishes in the Piazzetta.

If Capri is the sea day of a longer trip, our Naples in 3 days itinerary shows how to fit it in with everything else. Other boat trips and days out of town are in the Outdoor section, and on the map of Naples you can see where Molo Beverello and Calata Porta di Massa are in relation to your hotel.