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On the island of Capri , in southern Italy , there is a famous sea cave . Its entrance is barely one meter high and about two meters wide . To pass through , visitors must lie completely flat in a small rowing boat . For a moment , the rock ceiling hangs only centimeters above their faces . Inside , the darkness opens into a hall of glowing water . The whole cave shines with an electric blue color . This bright blue gave the place its modern name , the Grotta Azzurra , the Blue Grotto . The light show is simple physics . Below the small entrance , there is a second , much larger opening completely under the water . Most of the sunlight enters the cave through this submerged window . The water filters out the red light and lets the blue light pass , so everything inside glows . People have known this cave for about two thousand years . The Roman emperor Tiberius ruled the whole empire from Capri between 27 and 37 AD . He turned the cave into a private bathing place connected to a villa above . For centuries afterwards , local fishermen avoided the dark cave . Its fame returned in August 1826 , when the German poet August Kopisch and the painter Ernst Fries swam inside . A local fisherman , Angelo Ferraro , guided them to the hidden entrance . Kopisch wrote about the glowing water , and the cave quickly became a symbol of romantic Italy . The cave still held one more secret . In 1964 , divers recovered Roman statues of sea gods from the cave floor , and later surveys found statue bases still standing in place . Ancient visitors probably saw those statues rising from the glowing water . Today the ritual is unchanged : tourists lie flat in the boat , slip under the low rock , and open their eyes in a world of blue .
