Why go
The garden joins views of Capri and the Sorrentine Peninsula with objects from ancient Egypt and classical antiquity. Munthe’s placement of those objects within a high coastal setting is the distinctive experience. Reading the house alongside his book adds a personal narrative to the landscape without reducing it to a viewpoint.
The full story
The Swedish physician and writer Axel Munthe built Villa San Michele around the turn of the twentieth century. It occupies a ledge at the top of the Phoenician Steps, between Anacapri and Capri, roughly 327 metres above the sea. That position gives the gardens their wide relationship with the harbour, the Sorrentine Peninsula and Mount Vesuvius. Antiquities and works of art form part of the garden’s composition. Egyptian and classical objects sit within a landscape whose distant views are as significant as the house itself. Munthe later made the villa the subject of The Story of San Michele, first published in 1929. The book links the physical place with his account of its creation, giving visitors a literary route into understanding the house and its arrangement of garden, architecture and collected objects.