 Even at
the height of the tourist season on Capri, there are a few places
you can go that are so out of the way that you really
can wander for hours and scarcely pass another person.
Obviously, the town of Capri, itself, is not one of
those places. Perhaps if you head up to the eastern
height of the Villa Jovis, you might leave the flabby
hordes behind, but, alas, up there you will run into
at least small groups of very healthy tourists barely
warmed up from the one-hour climb; they will trample
you in the same fashion as their out-of-shape friends
are trampling the beautiful flowers of the Gardens of
Augustus back in town. No, you must smite the sounding
furrows and sail (or at least take a bus) towards the
baths of all the western stars, yea, even beyond the villa of Axel Munthe at Anacapri (though well worth
the visit) and even past the fine chair-lift to Monte
Solaro (also worthwhile). Go through and past the main
part of the town of Anacapri, itself, as if you were
walking up the stem of a gigantic capital letter "Y";
at the fork, the road on the left leads to the
lighthouse at Punta Carena, and the right leads down
to the Blue Grotto. The blank triangle in the middle
is the western side of the island of Capri; that is
where you want to go, but you can't go straight at the
fork; you have to go either to the extreme left or
right and then find the "trail of the forts" that
leads across from one side to the other, along the
entire western slope of the island. If you find it,
remember how to get back, because you may very well be
alone.Historical background Why
there
are
English
forts
along
the
western
coast
of
the
island
of
Capri
at
all requires a bit of an explanation. Briefly,
the Bourbon dynasty
was chased from its kingdom of Naples by the
forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806. The
Neapolitan royals, sheltered by the British
fleet, fled to Sicily. This left the mainland
in the hands of the French, first in the hands
of Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, and then of Murat, where it
remained until Napoleon's ultimate departure
from the European scene 10 years later.
Smaller islands were problematical, and for a
few years the British sought to hold on to
Capri by reinforcing the island against
invasion from the mainland. This entailed
building a string of fortifications. [For more
on the struggle for the island, see The Battle of Capri.] The forts Whereas Capri
was protected with continuous walls, the
wide-open western stretch of the island below
the town of Anacapri was fortified by the
English with a string of blockhouses. To a
certain extent, some of these installations
are on or near sites of earlier, strategically
placed “Saracen towers,”
which for centuries had provided protection
against pirate raids. The trail of forts
stretches from the Blue Grotto on the leeward
northern side to the lighthouse at Punta
Carena on the southern side.
The
construction of these forts entailed the
destruction or partial destruction of some
other interesting archaeological sites,
including Villa
Damecuta, one of the twelve Imperial
Roman villas to be found on the Island of
Capri. The known ruins of the Villa Damecuta
extend for 140 meters along a western cliff
and have an area of over 1,000 sq. meters. By
way of comparison, the main block of Villa
Jovis is 5,400 sq. meters (about one-third the
size of the Domus Tiberiana on the Palatinate
in Rome). *note Excavations
of villa Damecuta were begun under the
direction of the great Neapolitan
archaeologist, Amedeo
Maiuri, the discoverer of the grotto of
the famed Sibyl of Cuma.
Villa Damecuta is reminiscent of the more
famous Villa Jovis at the extreme height of
the other end of the island and appears to
have been abandoned after the great eruption
of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Also, not far from the
villa is the Damecuta tower, originally a
12th-century “Saracen tower.” Restoration of the “Trail of forts” was begun in 1998, partially funded by the European Union. When you say “twelve imperial villas” of Capri, you mean villas belonging to Tiberius or Augustus or members of their aristocratic extended families. There is some uncertainty as to the number; Houston (bibliography) views with skepticism the earlier claims of Beloch (bibliography) that they were pretty much known and catalogued by the date of Beloch’s book. In any event, at least two others, besides the villas Damecuta and Jovis are: (1) the Palazzo
a mare, occupying a stretch of some 600
meters along the sea immediately to the west of
today’s main harbor (the right, as you enter the
harbor); it, too, underwent military
transformation under the French in the early
1800s. The original layout is no longer evident,
and from above (say, the Anacapri road), the
area appears to be residential with a prominent
football field in the middle of it all); (2) the Villa of Gradola, immediately above the Grotta Azzurra. The buildings are strung out across the villa’s terraces in a panoramic position along the slope and had a stairway leading down to the grotto. It was excavated in the 19th century by the eccentric American Confederate Colonel John Clay MacKowen. He found capitals, fragments of statues, columns, and flooring, some of which he moved to his Casa Rossa in Anacapri, a current tourist attraction.
Beloch, Julius. Campanien.
Geschichte und Topographie des antiken Neapel
under seiner Umgebung. Pub.
Morgenstern. Breslau. 1890. Maiuri,
Amedeo. Capri.
Storia e monumenti. Istituto
Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome.
1957. |
