Historia de San Michele

San Michele is the name that the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe gave to the villa he bought in Capri in 1887. Built on the highest point of the island -on the site that was previously the residence of the Roman Emperor Tiberius-, Munthe would spend the rest of their days, gradually turning it into a haven of beauty for their singular personality: a true architectural prodigy, a world of pergolas and gardens, of dogs, monkeys and owls, of sculptures, sarcophagi, mosaics and columns through which they would parade all the great personalities of the time, from Henry James or Stefan Zweig to Greta Garbo or Princess Victoria of Savoy. Unprejudiced memories of a brilliant humanist doctor; evocative semblance of the Mediterranean of a passionate about its art, its history and its people; elegant travel book of a dilettante aristocrat and flâneur; philanthropic and pacifist plea of ??a man dedicated to the sufferings of all living beings... Historia de San Michele is a unique and masterly work, a contemporary classic converted in its own right into one of the great European memoirs of the 20th century.