---
node: spot_capri_villa_san_michele
type: spot
slug: villa_san_michele
destination: dest_capri
title: "Villa San Michele"
lead: "Villa San Michele is the house the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe built at Anacapri between 1896 and 1910, on the ruins of a villa of Tiberius. He wrote a book about it that sold in millions and made the place famous before most visitors ever saw it."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_capri_villa_san_michele.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Axel_munthe%27s_chapel_-_villa_san_michele.jpg"
image_author: "sammydavisdog"
image_license: "CC BY 2.0"
---

## Overview

Munthe built it himself, in pieces, reusing Roman fragments he dug out of the hillside — columns, floors, a sphinx of Egyptian granite set on the parapet facing the bay. The rooms are furnished as he left them and are modest; the loggias and the pergola are the architecture. He also bought Barbarossa hill above the house to stop the netting of migrating quail, and it remains a bird sanctuary.

## Highlights

Go for the pergola and the sphinx at the end of it, which look down some three hundred metres to Marina Grande. The Anacapri bus from Capri town takes fifteen minutes on a road worth the ride in itself. Combine it with the chairlift to Monte Solaro, which starts a few minutes' walk away.