Villa San Michele is the life’s work of Axel Munthe, the Swedish physician and author who spent decades building this house and garden above Anacapri, then told its story in his 1929 memoir The Story of San Michele. The rooms and pergolas hold a collection that is largely Roman, Etruscan and Egyptian, gathered by Munthe himself; the granite sphinx facing the Bay of Naples is his single most cherished piece, and the museum dates it to roughly 3,200 years old. Munthe also bought the ridge above the villa, Castello Barbarossa, to stop local hunters trapping migratory songbirds there, and in spring it now serves as a bird observatory. The view from the loggia, across to Vesuvius, explains why he never left.
A house museum connecting the Swedish writer-physician Axel Munthe’s Capri life with an eclectic ancient-art collection and early conservation action on the Barbarossa mountainside.
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- Villa San MicheleVilla San MicheleVilla and Axel Munthe overviewRead source
