The most celebrated cave in the world
The guide chain stretches under the sailor's expert hands, pulling the little blue and white boat toward the entrance of the cave. Voices and singing echo from within and visitors are told to lay down and stay quiet. A little fear lingers, but it only lasts a moment. Two seconds, and the boat slides in, sucked into the vibrant blue darkness. One breath, after which the tension melts away, giving way to wonder. This is the Blue Grotto: tension and wonder, history and energy.
The History of the Blue Grotto
An iconic place, the history of Anacapri's Blue Grotto began with Tiberius, son of Augustus and the second Roman Emperor, who made this karst cavity his own private nymphaeum , where he could relax and regenerate, far from the dangers of Roman politics.
A dedication to otium, which for centuries was considered synonymous with debauchery and depravity, so that the cave itself ended up being considered a cursed place, visited only by the most daring. But of course, danger fascinates, and so, in 1826, a handful of brave men decided to challenge superstition.
Encouraged by the hotelier Giuseppe Pagano and accompanied by the sailor Angelo Ferraro, the German painters August Kopisch and Ernst Fries ventured into the cave, becoming bewitched by it. Kopisch's report, entitled The Discovery of the Blue Grotto, published in 1838, contributed, along with the story The Tale of the Blue Grotto by Wilhelm Waiblinger (1828) and the novel The Improvisatore (1835) by Hans Christian Andersen, to spread the Blue Grotto's fame worldwide.
Heritage
In Roman times, the cavern was a true underwater annex of an Augustan-Tiberian villa called Gradola, now reduced to a few ruins. As evidence of this, there are numerous Roman statues representing Poseidon and other sea creatures that originally must have been arranged along the walls of the cave.
The statues, found in 1963 after some underwater archaeological investigations, are now kept in the Museo della Casa Rossa, in Anacapri.
The cave's opening is partially submerged by the sea, and depending on the tidal cycle, access can be more or less complicated. The unmistakable colour that gives its name to the cave is instead caused by the refraction of external light through a second underwater window, an extraordinary effect that still today, after thousands of years, continues to bewitch millions of visitors from all over the world.
