Blue grotto

The Legend of the Blue Grotto

The Blue Grotto (Grotta azzurra) is a natural cave which sank into the sea in prehistoric times. It takes its name from the blue light reverberating on the cave ceiling and walls. This effect is created by the fact that sunlight penetrates into the heart of the cave only after complex plays of refraction, reflection and filtering under water. Objects immerged in the water take on silver and phosphorescent tones. 

In Roman times it was adapted for use as a sea nymphaeum as testified by the statues of Neptune and Triton, recovered in the 20th century. The statues, now conserved in the Charterhouse Museum (Museo della Certosa), once lined the walls of the cave and visitors were able to admire the scene from a small, square chamber cut into the rock near the entrance.

Amedeo Maiuri believed the Grotta to have been part of the overlying roman villa Gradola – abandoned when it was believed the site was haunted by ghosts. The villa took its name Grádola, or Grátula, from the Latin word cryptula, of which crypta is an abbreviation.

Elsewhere, in a map of 1696 by the cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli, the cave is marked with the name “Grotta Gradola”.

During the same period the Grotta is mentioned in Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s Historiae Neapolitanae written in 1607 and again in 1709 in the Nuova Guida de’ forastieri [A new guide for foreigners] by Domenico Antonio Parrino.

In 1826 the cave was explored by the German painters August Kopish and Ernst Fries. The atmospheric colours were in complete harmony with the Romantic sensibility of the early nineteenth century and thanks to the two painters the cave soon became internationally known. In1904 it was studied in detail by Norman Douglas who published several monographs on the subject of Capri.

Short bibliography

De Caro S. and Greco A., (1983), Campania, Rome - Bari.

Maiuri A., Capri, (1956), Storia e monumenti, Rome.

Web Bibliography

http://www.archeona.arti.beniculturali.it/sanc_it/home.html

http://www.archeologia.beniculturali.it/pages/atlante/S132.html