Until 1874 the only means of communication between Capri and Anacapri was the Phoenician stairway - a steep stairway cut out of the rock leading along the rocky ridge from Marina Grande near Palazzo a Mare to the rock of Capodimonte on Anacapri near Villa San Michele where it terminated at the Medieval city gates with a change in altitude of approximately 200m. The date of the stairway is uncertain. The strange name, Scala Fenicia, is in no way based on a real Phoenician presence on the island (of which no evidence has ever been found) and is probably due to the tendency of 18th and 19th century scholars - especially in the Neapolitan area - to assume that the Phoenicians were present in the Mediterranean prior to the Greeks and thus to attribute all pre-Greek phenomena (such as place names or archaeological findings such as this stairway) to this Oriental people. The stairway was restored in 1998.