The island off the Amalfi Coast is famous for made-to-measure sandals you can’t find anywhere else.  

Any souvenir-seeker who visits the island of Capri probably has one item on their mind: a pair of hand-made leather sandals fit to their own feet. This ancient craft is one of the tiny island’s most well-known exports, and the signature strappy styles of a Capri sandal can be spotted in shops all over town. But how did this small vacation town off the Amalfi Coast become a footwear destination?

The story goes back not just a few decades, but millennia—to Tiberius, the second emperor of Rome, who spent the last years of his life living in a grand villa on the island, which was even then a destination for rest and relaxation. To navigate the rocky, hilly terrain, he wore sandals with a stiff leather sole and thin, flexible leather straps, protecting his feet while allowing for maximum mobility.  

More than a thousand years later, the trend-setting Vogue editor Diana Vreeland was taking her own Amalfi Coast vacation in 1935. On a tour of the ruins of Pompeii, she spotted a mural depicting a man from Tiberius’ time wearing those nearly-bare sandals, and she was so taken by the style that she asked a local craftsman in Capri to recreate them. After World War II, as tourism returned to Italy, shoemaker Amedeo Canfora opened a small shop in the perfect location opposite the Grand Hotel Quisisana, the grande dame of Capri’s hotels.  

Photo Credit: Amedeo Canfora

That modest shop, with its walls hung with shoe soles and costume jewelry and shelves of record books where Canfora saved his customers’ measurements, is where First Lady Jackie Kennedy went when she arrived on Capri in 1962. Followed by photographers wherever she went, Kennedy made an appointment to come to Canfora’s shop at midnight to be fitted for her own sandals in peace. (The shoes she had made that night, the K, are still made to this day!)  

Today, there are a number of shops in Capri that hand-make these historic sandals the traditional way, stitching together thin layers of leather to build up a durable yet flexible sole, then nailing in straps for a barely-there profile perfect for those sweltering summer days on the coast. Today, you can have your sandals bejeweled or minimal, with straps climbing up the ankle or low to the ground, but they’re still crafted precisely to fit your foot. They’re the perfect way to bring a piece of Capri’s old-world glamour home with you!