The garden of Villa San Michele lies hidden like an impenetrable secret behind towering white walls, like a Renaissance secret garden, a secluded place, accessible only to a privileged circle of people, a circle that has been considerably widened over the years. From the outside — even from afar — it is possible to imagine its delights, admire the white columns which support the long pergola, or the little chapel with the legendary sphinx watching over the surrounding landscape. But it is only after having passed the villa and entered the garden that one can fully comprehend its ingenious design and experience the spellbinding effects it has on its visitors.
To those who visit it for the first time, the garden unveils its glorious beauty: the freshness that the pergola offers, the majestic trees, and, last but not least, the breathtaking panoramic view of the surroundings and of the sea in perpetual motion.
What inspired Axel Munthe when he planned and realized his garden, and how did his project evolve? Is it possible to indentify specific sources of inspiration and find parallels in Italy or elsewhere?
Apart from the garden itself and what Axel Munthe writes in his book The Story of San Michele, documentation is scarce and consists mostly of photographs, notes and brief descriptions in the letters or diaries of visiting guests, and of documentation work carried out in recent times.
The nucleus of the garden consists of the vineyard with surroundings that Axel Munthe acquired in 1895 and added to in the following years. The fact that it is a vineyard is interesting from several points of view. On the one hand the land comprised vines and fruit trees already in place, which Munthe could continue to cultivate; on the other hand the adjacent terrassed areas were already prepared for cultivation and ideal for the creation of a larger garden. That the land had already been cultivated thus guaranteed a successful garden project.
The work was in all likelihood carried out in several stages; the pergola was completed in 1900 at the latest, the cypress alley in the following year. But most of the vineyard was still in place as late as 1903.
Apart from being a garden dedicated to leisure, to which we will come back to, Munthe also wanted and needed a garden of a more practical nature for the production of wine, bread and other things for domestic use. According to Villa San Michele’s gardener, Raffaele Scarpato, there still survive vines from Axel Munthe’s times which continue to bear fruit.
The modest vineyard of Mastro Vincenzo was transformed through hard work into the magnificent garden that we can still admire today. Axel Munthe gives us a brief account of how work proceeded in The Story of San Michele. Although written years later, the lively description gives the impression that the work was still ongoing at the time, but there is no doubt that the project was carried out in a short time period and was long completed by then.
The other key element in the garden is the alley of cypresses which connects the villa and the chapel situated in the eastern part of the garden. The trail path was once a public one which Axel Munthe had incorporated into his villa complex. The cypresses were probably planted in 1901, this dating is possible by photographs showing the Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden visiting the villa. According to Munthe himself, the trees came from the famous Villa d’Este at Tivoli, a piece of information confirmed by the presence of a greenhouse at Villa d’Este. Even today the Villa San Michele gets its supply of cypresses from northern Italy. The trees have been used for centuries to edge pathways in larger parks and gardens.
There exist parallels to the garden at Villa San Michele. The Villa Stengården (today called Hildasholm), Munthe’s propery in Leksand, Sweden, is with its distinct national character almost an opposite to his Italian home. English influences are also evident in this case, but the garden was not created by Munthe himself, but by his English wife, Hilda Pennington Mellor.
Crown Princess Victoria’s Villa Solliden on the Swedish island of Öland was partially planned as a replica of Villa San Michele; influences are evident for example in windows and mosaics. Close to the main building a pergola was built and also a terrace with steps which clearly bring to mind the garden of the Capri villa and which constitutes a link to the surrounding landscape, but otherwise the two gardens have little in common.
A more close parallel is Millesgården on Lidingö in Stockholm, once the home of the sculptor Carl Milles and partly constructed during the same period as Villa San Michele. The chief aim of Milles was to create an exhibition space for his own work in an environment inspired by Italian models. Milles made several journeys to Italy when he planned and carried out his own villa project, but probably never visited the island of Capri. But he might have been acquainted with Villa San Michele, which in the early decades of the 20th century became increasingly popular as a tourist attraction. Much later, Milles expressed his admiration for the villa’s pergola.
The two villa owners have a few traits in common: for example, both of them claimed to be the true architects of their creations and both tried to construct a mythology around themselves and their abodes.