Bio-inspired layered ceramic-polymer composites with high strength and toughness were prepared from sintered aluminum oxide ceramic sheets and cationically curing epoxy resins toughened with poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL). The architecture of the composite is inspired by nacre but is arranged on a larger scale. Ceramic sheets with a nominal thickness of 250m were assembled into composite plates by adhesive layers with a nominal thickness of 20m. Before the manufacturing of the composites, the stress-strain properties of the polymer component were tailored by the variation in the PCL content between 0 and 39wt%. For composites with 4 and 15 ceramic layers, the bending strengths achieved 327MPa and 376MPa, which are higher than that of pure ceramic sheets. Moreover, composites with 15 ceramic layers show a 16 times higher toughness compared to that of the pure ceramic sheets. The results indicate that the toughness of the layered composites increases significantly with the number of layers. Inspired by the geometrical ratio of the natural sheet composite nacre, we have achieved a similar strength but a 2 times higher toughness than nacre by only adding up to 6vol% of the polymer.