The Dark Cave

Many geographers and writers, since 1500, describing the beauty of Capri, island of Tiberius, speak of a large and mysterious sea cave that opened in the southern coast of Capri, below the Certosa di S. Giacomo. But it is the detailed descriptions in 1701, of the traveler Joseph Addison, to the discovery of Southern Italy, that make us understand the geological importance and the naturalistic beauty of this marine antry. The English writer calls it Oscura because it is poorly lit, despite being a hundred meters wide. Its high ceiling was dotted with hundreds of stalactites, while white stalagmites rose from the walls. In 1808, just a few months before the capture of Capri by the Napoleonic troops of Gioacchino Murat, a disastrous landslide caused by an earthquake caused the collapse of the Certosa tower, which served as a warning for the incursions of the Saracens, on the access to the Dark Cave. From then on, the mysterious cave could no longer be visited. A few years ago, the CNR drilled several holes along the rock ridge below the Certosa to find the famous cave. Unfortunately, all attempts have been in vain. Many historians have also hypothesized a connection between the garden of the Certosa and the mysterious marine antro. It was his disappearance that prompted the notary Giuseppe Pagano, owner of the Locanda Pagano, to accompany the writer August Kopisch and the painter Ernst Fries to discover a cave that the capresi called for centuries the Grotta di Gradola, or for its color Devil’s Cave. On 17 August 1826, the Blue Cave was discovered and later named Azzurra. The Dark Grotto was also a real obsession for the painter Karl Diefenbach, who depicted it fantastically in many paintings as a symbol of Theosophy, the religion of darkness and light.

curated by Renato Esposito