'Next day we went to Capri. This place has something Eastern in its aspect, with the glowing heat reflected from its rocky white walls, its palm trees, and the round domes of the churches that look like mosques. The sirocco was burning, and rendered me quite unfit to enjoy anything; for really climbing up five hundred and thirty-seven steps to Anacapri in this frightful heat, and then coming down again, is toil only fit for a horse. True, the sea is wondrously lovely, looking down on it from the summit of the bleak rock, and through the singular fissures of the jagged peaks...
But above all, I must tell you of the blue grotto... The colour is the most dazzling blue I ever saw, without shadow or cloud, like a pane of opal glass; and as the sun shines down, you can plainly discern all that is going on under the water, while the whole depths of the sea, with its living creatures are disclosed. You can see the coral insects and polypuses clinging to the rocks, and far below, fishes of different species meeting and swimming past each other... Every stroke of the oars echoes strangely under the vault, and as you row round the walls, new objects come to light. I do wish you could see it, for the effect is singularly magical. On turning towards the opening by which you entered, the daylight seen through it seems bright orange, and by moving even a few paces, you are entirely isolated under the rock, in the sea, with its own peculiar sunlight: it is as if you were actually living under the water for a time.'
from Letters from Italy and Switzerland - Felix Mendelssohn in a letter to his sisters
