About Rosaria Esposito
I was born in Anacapri and I live on Via Pagliaro, the road that runs down towards the Blue Grotto steps. I have been a licensed Campania tour guide since 2015. Before that I grew up watching the bus stop at the top of the stairs fill and empty, which is where most of what is on this site comes from.
Why I started writing this down
I have had the same three arguments with visitors a thousand times, and I got tired of having them at the cave mouth, where it is too late for any of them to be useful.
The first is about money. There is no Blue Grotto ticket. There is a €6 state entrance fee, because the cave is a state archaeological site, and a separate €12 rowboat fare that goes to the boatmen’s cooperative. Arriving from Anacapri that is €18. Arriving by motorboat from Marina Grande, which is how most people come, a €23–25 transfer sits on top and the real total is €41–42. Almost nobody prints the second figure. A large share of the people who tell me they were scammed at the grotto were in fact meeting a lawful second fare nobody had mentioned to them. Both totals, and where every euro goes.
The second is about the queue. Nothing you can buy moves you up it. Not a tour, not a pre-booked transfer, not the free ministry booking. Buying the transfer online skips the ticket-office line at the pier and that is all it does. In July the rowboat wait runs 60 to 90 minutes, and what it buys is under five minutes inside. What those minutes actually are.
The third is about the sea. The cave mouth is about a metre high above the waterline, so swell, high tide or a northerly wind shuts it. The skippers decide at the cave mouth at 9am and there is no way to know the night before. It opens and closes within the same day often enough that I check before I promise anybody anything. Where the daily status is published.
How I work
Prices and rules on this site come from the regional tariff schedule, the Ministry of Culture page for the Grotta Azzurra and CoopCulture’s published visiting rules, checked against what the operators say themselves. Where those sources disagree, I print the disagreement rather than the tidier number: the published closing times conflict four ways, so this site gives an approximate range and never a confident last admission. Where nobody publishes a figure, I do not supply one. There is no official statistic for how often the cave is shut, so you will not find one here, however much you would like it.
I do not recommend one boat company over another. I say “the operator” and I mean it. The one exception is the live open/closed banner, which the Motoscafisti operator updates daily and the island’s other sites syndicate, because telling you to check it before you spend anything is the single most useful thing on this site and it costs me nothing to say.
Why I still put my own clients on a boat
The cheap route is real and it works: the Staiano bus from Anacapri, €2.40, the stairs, and €18 at the bottom. You queue on land instead of bobbing offshore, which matters more than people expect. I give that route in full and I do not soften it. It is here, step by step.
And then, if you are coming over from Sorrento or Naples for the day, I will still book you a boat, because the crossing and the circuit of the island are the day out and the grotto is a five-minute stop inside it that may not happen. Book the boat for the day, not for the cave, and a closed morning costs you a stop rather than the trip. The four departure points, compared. I also say plainly when the answer is not to go at all.
What I am not
I am not the Ministry of Culture, not CoopCulture, not the boatmen’s cooperative and not any boat company. I do not sell tickets and I cannot put you in a rowboat. When you are ready to book a tour I send you to GetYourGuide, and often enough I tell you to take the bus instead. If something here is wrong or has moved since I checked it, write to me — those are the emails I want.