Journey to Jeranto bay
Many years ago in the bay there was a cave to extract calcareous rocks directed to Bagnoli’s steelworks, afterwards in the years of the steel crisis it was abandoned.
The bay remained for long time property of a private company, thanks to this it have been preserved without others changes to ruins the ecosystem and the habitat.
Ground and hills in perfect harmony with a crystalline sea and emerald reflections go along with us during our excursion from the square of Nerano, the excursion last about 30 minutes but give us breathtaking landscapes
We start our journey from Nerano along the ancient Jeranto road where we can reach the bay. The footpath start at 168 meters above sea level and going along the mountain offer us some unique panoramic views, we can admire marina del Cantone and all the cost till cape Mortella.
Continuing our excursion we climb the hill up to the highest point, from there it’s possible to see the entrance of Noglie grotto, where had been discovered some rests of a prehistoric civilization of Neolithic age. From there the path get down gently crossing several calcareous rock walls till the Sprito ridge from which it’s possible to get a wonderful views on the whole bay and on the “Tre Pizzi” promontory. Now we head for Montalto tower on the homonymous point, this is another great panoramic point. The ancient sixteenth century Montalto tower with all the contemporary many others located along the whole peninsula coast (you can see others on Punta Campanella, near Crapolla, ecc) defended the area against Saracen raids.
After that we’ll pass along two circular limekilns discovered with the ruins of an old buildings, maybe a second century a.C. villa, and some ceramic pieces.
Arrived at the sea we can easily and clearly see the remainder of the cave that deeply mark the landscape, in fact almost an half of the Penna cape mountain is missing destructed by the cave operation of which we can also see the buildings used for the rock extraction and transformation before they were embark at the close to be shipped to Bagnoli’s steelworks.
Even if the cave deeply and irreparably disfigured this place, its presence prevented other activity to further ruin the area.
In really there are two bays: the bigger one is accessible only by sea, the smaller one called Capitiello is reachable through the path.
The Capitiello beach is very little but it is reflected in a marvellous blue sea that gradually becomes green as depth lower.
On the background we can admire Penna cape on the left with the cave and its buildings, on the rigth there is punta Campanella with its lighthouse and another Saracen tower, in the middle there is Capri island with its famous faraglioni to complete this wonderful natural landscape. Jeranto bay is part of Area Marina Protetta “Punta Campanella”, a protected area recently born to preserve one of the cost part among the most beautiful in Italy for both the terrestrial environment, with luxuriant flora and fauna, and the marin area, a real oasis for many species that offer some of the best underwater scenarios in the Mediterranean sea.
The protected area almost surround the whole peninsula and include about 40 kilometres of coast characterized by a large number of promontories, inlets, several grottos and bays among which the most famous is Jeranto.