Arco Naturale

On the wild eastern edge of Capri, where the cliffs fall away towards the Sorrento Peninsula, a great limestone vault stands free against the sky. The Arco Naturale is all that survives of a vast cavern that once opened deep inside the mountain. Over time landslides tore away its walls and rain dissolved the weaker rock, until only a single span of the old roof was left: a bridge of stone about 12 metres wide, hanging some 18 metres above the ground between two rough pillars, one rising from the slope below and the other anchored in the cliff. Geologists place the arch's present shape far back in the Palaeolithic, after the island had stopped being shaken by the movements that formed it.

What makes the arch so arresting is its frame. Looking through the opening, the eye travels over rugged ridges and plunging cliffs to the blue water of the gulf and the distant coast of the mainland, with the little Li Galli islands floating offshore. Its curve is unusually round for a natural formation, and long, pale stalactites, formed by water seeping through the limestone, still cling to the underside of the vault. The scene enchanted the travellers who discovered Capri in the 19th century: the French writer Maxime Du Camp likened it to a triumphal arch raised by primeval nature, and the American painter William Stanley Haseltine made it the subject of a large canvas around 1870, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

The arch sits in a corner of the island that has drawn admirers since antiquity. Capri was a favourite retreat of the emperor Augustus, and his successor Tiberius governed the empire from his villas here during his final years. Below the arch a stepped path winds down to the Grotta di Matermania, a large cave that the Romans turned into an elaborate nymphaeum, its name traditionally linked to the cult of the Great Mother goddess Cybele. From there the Pizzolungo path follows the cliffs past the modernist Villa Malaparte towards the Faraglioni, the sea stacks that are Capri's emblem.

Getting there

The arch is reached only on foot, by lanes and stepped paths from the town of Capri, roughly 2 km away, or along the Pizzolungo path from Punta Tragara. Capri is linked by ferry and hydrofoil from Naples and Sorrento to the harbour of Marina Grande, from where a funicular climbs to the town. The nearest airport is Naples International Airport (NAP), about 38 km away across the gulf; the nearest mainland city by distance, Torre del Greco, lies about 28 km away over the water.