A lizard lives on the Faraglione di Fuori that exists nowhere else on earth: Podarcis siculus coeruleus, blue from throat to tail, a close relative of the mainland ruin lizard from which it drifted apart once the rock broke away from the island. The name of the three stacks comes from the Greek faros, lighthouse: in antiquity great fires were lit at night on the rocks near the coast to mark the route for sailors, and the faraglioni almost certainly served the same purpose. The view that made them famous, painted in the nineteenth century by Rebell, Dahl, Bierstadt and Haseltine, is earned on land, from the terraces of the Gardens of Augustus.
What to see
Each of the three has its own name. The Faraglione di Terra, or Stella, is the only one still joined to the island, by an isthmus four metres wide, and the tallest at 111 metres. A fracture cave opens on its south-western flank, known as the little Blue Grotto for the green-blue the water takes on as it filters light through a submerged threshold. The Faraglione di Mezzo, 81 metres, is pierced right through by a natural tunnel 58 metres long and on average 13 high: boats sail into it. The Faraglione di Fuori, or Scopolo, reaches 104 metres and is cut off from the previous one by the Saetta, a channel 8 metres wide and 60 long. Behind them stands the Monacone rock, with remains of Roman masonry and a name recalling the monk seals, gone from here since 1904.
The Gardens of Augustus are planted terraces cut into the cliff by Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the German steel industrialist who in the early twentieth century bought the coast between the Certosa di San Giacomo and Castiglione. They were called the Krupp gardens, and the town council renamed them after the First World War in honour of the emperor. Today they gather the island's flora and open onto 180 degrees of view, from Monte Solaro to Marina Piccola. Among the flowerbeds a monument to Lenin of 1968 — stacked marble blocks five metres high, carved by Giacomo Manzù — recalls the revolutionary's stay on Capri in 1908. Below, cut into the rock face, via Krupp drops away in eight hairpins, opened by the industrialist himself to reach the yacht moored at Marina Piccola: approved on 28 May 1899 and finished in the spring of 1902 to a design by Emilio Mäyer.
Visiting
From the Piazzetta it is a walk of barely ten minutes up via Vittorio Emanuele and via Matteotti, past the Certosa: the gardens charge a small entrance fee, take half an hour to walk and their terraces are almost all level. Via Krupp runs down from the gardens to Marina Piccola, but it is a fragile road, cut into limestone that flakes away: closed by a rockfall in 1976, reopened on 30 June 2008 after consolidation work, it has alternated openings and closures ever since depending on the state of the cliff, so ask locally. To see the stacks from below, take a boat at Marina Grande or Marina Piccola.
Our editors' tip
We go up in the late afternoon, once the groups have headed back to the ferries and the sun comes from behind you: the rock shifts from grey to orange within the hour. And if you only have time for one thing, choose the boat: passing under the arch of the Faraglione di Mezzo, with thirteen metres of limestone vault overhead, beats any photograph taken from above.
