Axel Munthe's villa with the sphinx above the gulf
At the top of the Phoenician Steps, the ancient stairway of almost 900 steps that once linked the port of Capri with Anacapri, stands Villa San Michele, built from the end of the nineteenth century by the Swedish doctor and writer Axel Munthe on the ruins of a chapel and a Roman villa. Munthe told its story in "The Story of San Michele", a bestseller translated into dozens of languages.
The house is filled with Roman and Renaissance objects, furniture and works of art collected by Munthe, in an atmosphere of light and white walls. But the real enchantment is the garden, with a pergola of columns covered in climbing plants, leading to a terrace where an Egyptian granite sphinx gazes out over the Gulf of Naples from 300 metres above the sea. The villa now belongs to the Swedish state and hosts concerts in summer; the surrounding Monte Barbarossa is a bird reserve.
Tip: reach the villa on foot from the centre of Anacapri; from here a chairlift climbs to Monte Solaro, the highest point of the island.
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