Axel Munthe Views
Axel Munthe married his first wife, Ultima Hornberg, on 24 November 1880. Hornberg was a Swedish woman he met while she was studying art in Paris. They divorced in the late 1880s, and in 1892 she remarried, to a Swedish manufacturer named Gustaf Richter. She had a boy by Richter in 1893, and died in 1895.
Axel Munthe willed Villa San Michele to the Swedish nation, and it is maintained by a Swedish foundation. The complex functions as a cultural center, hosting concerts, visiting Swedish scholars, and the local Swedish consulate. The foundation also maintains the Mount Barbarossa bird sanctuary, which covers over 55,000 square meters.
The Villa San Michele is located on the north-eastern side of Anacapri, 327 metres above sea level. Here was an ancient Roman imperial villa, whose ruins were preserved by Axel Munthe and are now to be found in the garden. In the area there were the remains of a medieval chapel later moved to its present position by Munthe himself.
In 1881, at the age of 24, Axel Munthe learned of a terrible outbreak of Cholera in Naples and of an acute shortage of doctors to treat the sick. Recently qualified as a doctor he spent all his resources on medicine and took the first available transport to Naples where he worked against the disease for the next two years.
Axel Munthe Images
