Tiberius's Villas on Capri

The emperor Tiberius left Rome in 26 AD never to return. For most of the rest of his life he stayed on the island of Capri, where he had 12 villas. Remains still exist of some of them. The best preserved of them is the Villa Jovis, or possibly Jonis, which was the largest. CapriWeb has four pages of text and some nice pics of the Villa Jovis, while Oebalus also has informative text and a floor plan. The University of Heidelberg's Archaeological Institute has German text with models of what the villa may have looked like.

The remains of another villa at Damecuta are also covered by CapriWeb and Oebalus (again with floor plan).

Thirdly, only Oebalus has information about the Palazzo a Mare. The Roman villa on the site of the Villa San Michele may have been part of this complex.

Alex Munthe on Capri

Axel Munthe's The Story of San Michele is briefly mentioned in the introduction to Allan Massie's "Tiberius: The Memoirs of the Emperor", the Roman History Reading Group's current read. Munthe was a Swedish doctor who built a villa on Capri, on what was allegedly the site of one of Tiberius's villas, in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. He left the house and his collection of antiquities to the Swedish state on his death in 1949, by which time it had become famous due to Munthe's 1929 book. It is one of Capri's major tourist sites, attracting fans of the book, and those wanting to see the collection, and the famous gardens and views. (photo of Alex Munthe from wikipedia is in the public domain)







The villa has its own website and is naturally featured on Capri tourism websites (for example capri.net and capri.com) as well. (photos of Villa San Michele are from wikicommons and are used courtesy of a Creative Commons licence.)

A long rambling review of Munthe's book, with copious quotations.