Take a trip to the Blue Grotto.
Private jet Capri.
Capri is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. The main town Capri that is located on the island shares the name. It has been a resort since the time of the Roman Republic.
Some of the main features of the island include the following: the Marina Piccola (the little harbour), the Belvedere of Tragara (a high panoramic promenade lined with villas), the limestone crags called sea stacks that project above the sea (the Faraglioni), the town of Anacapri, the Blue Grotto (Grotta Azzurra), and the ruins of the Imperial Roman villas.
Capri is part of the region of Campania, Province of Naples. The town of Capri is the island’s main population centre. The island has two harbours, Marina Piccola and Marina Grande (the main port of the island). The separate comune of Anacapri is located high on the hills to the west.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Capri became a popular resort for European artists, writers and other celebrities. The book that spawned the 19th century fascination with Capri in France, Germany, and England was Entdeckung der blauen Grotte auf der Insel Capri, ‘Discovery of the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri’, by the German painter and writer August Kopisch, in which he describes his 1826 stay on the island and his (re)discovery of the Blue Grotto.
John Singer Sargent and Frank Hyde are among the prominent artists who stayed on the island around the late 1870s. Sargent is known for his series of portraits featuring local model Rosina Ferrara. The English artist and adventurer, John Wood Shortridge acquired a fortino at Marina Piccola there in the 1880s, (later transformed into a private villa by Dame Gracie Fields) and married a Capri girl. He formed a close friendship with the English novelist George Gissing who provides a colourful and insightful account of his stays with Shortridge in his ‘Published Letters of George Gissing.’ Claude Debussy refers to the island’s hills in the title of his impressionistic prélude Les collines d’Anacapri (1910). Capri is the setting for “The Lotus Eater” (1945), a short story by Somerset Maugham. In the story, the protagonist from Hendon, part of the borough of Barnet, in London, comes to Capri on a holiday and is so enchanted by the place he gives up his job and decides to spend the rest of his life in leisure there. British novelist Compton Mackenzie lived there from 1913 to 1920, with later visits, and set some of his work on the island, e.g. Vestal Fire (1927).
As well as being a haven for writers and artists, Capri served as a relatively safe place for foreign gay men and lesbians to lead a more open life; a small nucleus of them were attracted to live there, overlapping to some extent with the creative types mentioned above. Poet August von Platen-Hallermünde was one of the first. Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen wrote the roman à clef Et le feu s’éteignit sur la mer (1910) about Capri and its residents in the early 20th century, causing a minor scandal. Fersen’s life on Capri became the subject of Roger Peyrefitte’s fictionalised biography, L’Exilé de Capri. A satirical presentation of the island’s lesbian colony is made in Mackenzie’s 1928 novel Extraordinary Women (unrelated to the Dominican film of the same name), inspired by the affairs of American painter Romaine Brooks (in the novel, under the pseudonym of Olimpia Leigh). One of the island’s most famous foreign gay exiles was Norman Douglas; his novel South Wind (1917) is a thinly fictionalised description of Capri’s residents and visitors, and a number of his other works, both books and pamphlets, deal with the island, including Capri (1930) and his last work, A Footnote on Capri (1952).
Memoirs set on Capri include Edwin Cerio’s Aria di Capri (1928) (translated as That Capri Air), which contains a number of historical and biographical essays on the island, including a tribute to Norman Douglas; The Story of San Michele (1929) by Swedish royal physician Axel Munthe (1857–1949), who built a villa of that name and Shirley Hazzard’s Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000), about her reminiscences of Graham Greene. Graham Greene had a house in the town of Anacapri, the upper portion of the island, where he lived with his lover Catherine Walston.
The Last Legion, a historical fantasy novel by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, is partly set on the island of Capri, where Romulus is imprisoned after a failed rescue attempt in Ravenna by Aurelianus. Romulus discovers the sword of Julius Caesar hidden in one of Tiberius’s villas, which is revealed at the end of the novel to be the legendary sword Excalibur. Parts of the 2007 film adaptation were subsequently filmed on the island.
French singer Hervé Vilard released the song “Capri c’est fini” in 1965, which became a worldwide hit.
Arranging a private jet charter to Capri will first need a flight to and from Naples Capodichino airport (LIRN/NAP), or Salerno Costa d’Amalfi Pontecagnano airport (LIRI / QSR) as there is no airport in Capri. On arrival into Naples or Salerno, a short helicopter ride taking 15 minutes from Naples and 10 minutes from Salerno will fly you to the Capri heliport. Alternatively, the hydrofoil from Naples takes 40 minutes or 20 minutes from Salerno.
A private jet charter from London to Naples or London to Salerno will take approximately 2 hours 40 minutes in a 6 seat Cessna Citation CJ2 jet, and 2 hours 30 minutes in a 8 seat Cessna Citation XLS jet.
Arranging a private jet charter or helicopter transfer with Freedom Air to arrive in style to Capri is simple. The Freedom Air team can be reached at charters@jamesg319.sg-host.com and on +44 (0) 1275 548001 to book your next trip.