J.K. Place Capri

J.K. Place Capri

Built on the foundations of Villa Bevaro, a private house erected before 1878 and converted into the Hotel Continental by 1885, perched on the cliffs above Marina Grande on Capri's north-west shore, J.K. Place Capri carries more history per square metre than most buildings twice its size: the American cousins Kate and Saidee Wolcott-Perry, later fictionalised by Compton Mackenzie in Vestal Fire, lodged here in 1897, furnished their rooms at their own expense, and left a legal dispute in their wake. The building passed through various hands and various names before Jonathan and Ori Kafri, who founded the J.K. Place collection in Florence in 2003 together with Eduardo Safdie, restored it and opened it under the J.K. banner in 2007. The hotel has 22 rooms and suites, eight of those suites, the majority facing the Gulf of Naples, and it is the only property on the island built directly on the coast, which places it at a remove from the boutique concentration of hotels in Capri Town and Marina Piccola. The Kafri family runs the collection; the Florentine architect Michele Bonan has designed every property in it. Bonan's hand here is more nautical than Florentine: the breakfast room's walls are painted deep blue, the corridors carry black-and-white photographs of vintage racing yachts, the floors are luminous white, and the bathrooms are finished in grey and white marble mosaic. Rooms in the J.K. Studio category run between 38 and 45 square metres and come with balconies, either sea- or pool-facing. The penthouse suite has a long private terrace overlooking the full sweep of the Gulf of Naples with Vesuvius behind it. The library is stocked with art and architecture books in the manner of the Florence original. The JKitchen restaurant, helmed by chef Eduardo Estatico, serves a Mediterranean menu built around Campanian producers and organic seasonal ingredients: linguini with clams and Amalfi lemons, cod with Vesuvian olive oil and puttanesca, whatever the morning catch allows. The spa uses Dr. Barbara Sturm products. The hotel opens mid-April and closes mid-October, which is, practically speaking, the only reasonable window for Capri. What J.K. Place Capri does, and does well, is compress the sensation of staying in a privately owned Caprese house into a hotel format without tipping into either museum quietude or corporate smoothness. The terrace bar attracts guests and islanders through the evening hours, which keeps things from feeling sealed off from the island. The free shuttle to Piazzetta, a ten-minute ride, takes some of the sting out of the location's distance from the centre, though the walk down to Marina Grande takes five minutes and the chairlift to Monte Solaro departs almost from the front gate. The hotel carries three Michelin Keys and a Leading Hotels of the World membership, and the service culture reflects both, not in a way that announces itself but in the manner of a small staff that knows what you need before you ask. You should not come if you are travelling with young children, as rooms here do not accommodate cribs or rollaway beds, the hotel is oriented firmly toward couples, and the steep coastal site is not designed for small people or anyone with limited mobility. You should not come for a base from which to work: the island is the point, and the hotel is expensive enough to take seriously as a destination in itself. You should come if you want 22 rooms that have been thought about, a terrace facing the Gulf of Naples, food that respects what grows and swims nearby, and the particular pleasure of arriving by hydrofoil from Naples, forty-five minutes across the bay, with Vesuvius on the horizon, into a hotel that has been expecting you since 1885. The short version: A 22-room cliffside boutique hotel in Marina Grande, Capri, built on an 1878 villa and opened by the Kafri family in 2007, with Bonan's nautical interiors, chef Eduardo Estatico's Mediterranean menu, and a terrace that looks directly at the Gulf of Naples.