So yesterday we landed in Capri where we will be until tomorrow week, when we’re off to Florence. This is quite a culture shock after Naples. Where Naples is large, noisy, shambolic, full of life (and all the detritus that goes with life) Capri is small (just 10.2 square km) quiet (although a lot of hotels and shops only open later this month) organised and clean.
Today we walked up to the Gardens of Augustus, created in the early twentieth century by the German industrialist, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, who had a house here. Originally called the Krupp Gardens, they were re-named after the First World War by the town authorities, to pay homage to the Roman emperor, who favoured the island, building temples and villas, creating a garden and putting in an aqueduct here.
The gardens are the most manicured I can remember seeing in Italy. It was strange seeing so many flowers out when the trees are only just starting to come into blossom.
Krupp was keen that the gardens should be open to the public, which they are, for just one euro.
There are fabulous views from the gardens looking down to the rocky coast.
It is strange that in this fairly exclusive idyll, we should come across a statue of Lenin, but apparently he was a guest of Maxim Gorky, who had a house on Capri, in 1908.
Krupp had a steep path built to connect the gardens with Marina Piccolo, the smaller of the two ports here, where he used to keep his boat. The path, still known as Via Krupp (it has not had a change of name forced upon it) is supposedly stunning, but has been closed for a few years as, built of limestone (Capri is not volcanic) it is prone to rock falls.
Tortoise Travel 