There is only one piece of information that makes this address useful, and it is verified: it opens at 6:00 and closes at 2:00, every day. On an island where the opening hours are an unknown quantity and half the places close in winter, a bar covering twenty hours out of twenty-four next to the Stazione Marittima, the ferry terminal, solves a great many practical problems. Bar Capriccio is at Via Roma 99, at Marina Grande, a few steps from where the ferry docks.
Three places in one
In the morning it is a coffee bar, with the local cakes on the counter: if you have the first hydrofoil and are getting up in the dark, at 6:00 there is a light on here and coffee ready, and it is practically the only thing open. At lunch it becomes somewhere to eat quickly with a view over the harbour, useful when you are fitting together the timings of a day out from Naples and do not want to burn two hours at a table.
In the evening it changes again: lounge bar, cocktails, live music. It is the typical rhythm of island bars, where a single place has to cover every part of the day because the pool of customers is small. The other side of the coin is predictable and should be said: a place that does three jobs is not the best at any of the three. For real pastry the right counter is the Bar Dal Cavaliere; for bread and leavened baking, Paname’.
A table on the harbour, and what you see from it
Marina Grande is not the Procida of the postcards: that is Corricella, with the houses stacked in tiers and the boats. Here you are in the working harbour, with the ferries manoeuvring, the lorries unloading, the scooters tearing along Via Roma. Sitting at a table, in half an hour you watch the real island go by: the commuters coming back from Naples, the school kids, the fishermen coming in.
It is also the best place to grasp something that escapes day trippers: Procida is an island lived in all year by people who work there, not a seaside resort that switches on in July. The harbour front tells you that better than any monument. If you have an empty hour before going back, spend it here rather than queueing at the ticket office.
When it genuinely helps
Three concrete situations. The first: you are leaving early. The first boat to Naples has to be taken in the dark, and at 6:00 this bar is open while the rest of the harbour sleeps — check the times of the ferries to Procida and plan accordingly.
The second: you arrive late. If you land after dinner and the kitchens have closed, having somewhere open until 2:00 a couple of steps from the landing is the difference between sitting down somewhere and going to bed on an empty stomach.
The third: you are waiting. Waiting for the ferry is the most widely practised activity at Marina Grande, and here you do it sitting down with a view of the pier instead of standing in front of the ticket office.
On prices and ratings I am not publishing numbers, because I do not have any that are verified: the website is barcapriccio.eu and the phone +39 081 896 9560. The opening hours, those yes, are confirmed.