Gated

The Villa San Michele is surely one of the most beautiful places on earth, particularly if you like spectacular views.

It's definitely not the place to catch a cold, which I did the other day (possibly when getting up at 4 am to catch the first ferry to Naples).

We stay at la Foresteria, a secluded area of this complex on Capodimonte, at the foot of Monte Solaro.

Our house is right next to the former home of Axel Munthe, i e the Villa San Michele, parts of which you can see on the image above and which is the museum and the major reason why the alley below us, il Viale Axel Munthe, is cramped with herds of tourists all day, all heading for a tour of the house and the park, dramatically located overlooking Capri town halfway down to the sea level. The Tyrrhenian Sea level.

At la Foresteria guests like us, who have applied to profit from the generosity of Axel Munthe and the San Michele Foundation during three weeks, are housed in several small buildings forming a cluster of groups of different kinds of people from Sweden; mostly scientists, researchers, journalists, artists.

A few guests each year receive the special honorary scholarship and don't pay for their stay. The rest of us pay 250 kronor/person/night.

Everybody is working on something, quite a few on projects connected to either the villa or Italy.

And everybody is enjoying the silence, the walks, the food, the views.

Not many of us know Italian, J being one excellent exception.

Staying here is an exclusive experience no doubt and I can't help but feeling like I'm inside a gated community, the walls in this case however not protecting us from thieves and burglars but from nosy and confused tourists.