Giardini Augusto - Gardens of Augustus, Capri

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This 10-minute walk from the Piazzetta is one of the easiest and most popular on Capri. The gardens, named for Emperor Augustus, were built over Roman ruins by German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp in the 19th century. Multiple terraces provide fabulous panoramas of the Tyrrhenian Sea, soaring cliffs, the Faraglione and an eagle-eye view of Via Krupp - a road built by the same creator of the gardens. Winding down the cliffside in a series of stomach-churning, hairpin turns, it leads to Marina Piccola and a couple of the very few island beaches. It's also occasionally closed (as when we were there) due to falling rock.

Il Faraglione are iconic of Capri, being the most photographed and recognizable of her natural wonders. Faraglione is a generic term for sections of rock that have been isolated from the mainland and eroded over time into cone-like formations. Of these famous three, the closest to the coast - di Terra or la Stella - is actually still attached to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. The smallest, di Mezzo for "middle", has an opening large enough for boats to pass through. Di Fuori/ Scopolo is the farthest away and home to a very rare, blue lizard found nowhere else on earth.

Because it's so easy to get to and FREE, this spot tends to draw large crowds and I couldn't get decent pictures of the gardens for the people everywhere. I'd recommend doing this one early in the morning and then moving on to more remote locations.

The Gardens of Augustus is now a park that belongs to the town of Capri. It is a beautiful garden and has very interesting history. About 30 years BCE Caesar Augustus came here and fell in love with the place. Doing what any self respecting Caesar would do he took over the Island and spent a lot of time here eating grapes peeled for him by beautiful babes (just seeing if I had your attention).

Anyway, his successor, Tiberius really loved the place and built twelve villas (one for each variety of grapes that could be peeled for you) than to ease his totally toga decedent party soul he name them after twelve Roman Gods. It was from the largest and most beautiful ville the “villa Jovis he ruled the world. The guy never went to Rome.

The gardens as you see them now were built by the Krupp family the German industrialists and they gave it to the people of Capri.

The gardens belonged to the villa of Friedrich Alfred Krupp, son of the founder of the German steelworks who resided in Capri in the late 1800's.

Built on the ruins of ancient Roman structures, the gardens were donated by Krupp to the Town of Capri, which later named them after the Roman emperor. In a corner of the garden, a statue of Lenin by sculptor Manzu was erected to commemorate the Russian leader's stay in Capri.

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The Gardens of Augustus, towards the top of the island, are a retreat into a natural paradise, complete with unforgettable panoramas.
From the vantage point of the gardens, apart from the splendid views of the sea, are fantastic photographic vistas.

To one side the undulating roofs and picturesque bell tower of the St. James' Certosa (Charterhouse), a Carthusian Monastery, lie in the foreground below the Gardens.

Ahead, the Faraglioni rocks rise from the blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea

To the other side, a narrow road zigzags dramatically in hairpin bends down Capri's cliff reaching the harbor of Marina Piccola below.

This fantastic feat of engineering is known as Via Krupp, named after a German steel magnate, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, who, in the early nineteen hundreds, came to Capri to convalesce after an illness, and later commissioned both the Gardens of Augustus and the road that takes his name. Via Krupp, however, is not always open because of the possibility of falling rocks.