Capri Culture

The Piazzetta — formally Piazza Umberto I — is tiny, and that is the point: four cafes with tables pushed to the edges of a space the size of a large room, where the entire island passes through in the course of an evening. It has been described as an open-air drawing room, and it works exactly like one.

Two crafts survive as real businesses. Sandals are cut and fitted to the foot in small workshops, a trade that predates the island’s fame and outlived the fashion moment that publicised it. Perfume is made here from local plants by a house founded in 1948, working from a formula tradition traces to the monastery.

The food is simple and specific: the caprese salad of tomato, mozzarella and basil is named after the island, and torta caprese is a flourless chocolate and almond cake said to have been created by accident. Ravioli capresi, filled with local cheese and marjoram, is the dish that is genuinely everyday here.

The island has drawn writers steadily — Norman Douglas, Compton Mackenzie, Gorky — and a surprising amount of what outsiders believe about Capri comes from books written by people who stayed.