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An Enchanted Hideaway
as his ideal homeland and dividing his time
between Capri and Taormina. These were
highly productive years, during which the
prodigious writer completed 17 novels, and
sought to attain his ideal of a truly unfettered
lifestyle.
“Italy has bewitched me,” he would write. “It is
the only country in the world today that openly
declares its love of life. No other people has
inherited such a radiant civilization.” Capri
would prove to be the ne plus ultra of this
endless idyll: the one place where Peyrefitte
could return to nature and give free rein to his
instincts.
On the trail of Count Fersen
In the early 1950s, the Blue Island,
Capri, was frequented by members of the
impoverished nobility, idiosyncratic loners,
and unconventional couples using the island
to conduct their relationships out in the open.
Decades after Capri’s original “adopted
islanders”, among them the Scottish writer
Norman Douglas, the Swiss doctor Axel
Munthe, and the legendary ballet impresario
Sergei Diaghilev, who together wrote an
entire chapter of the island’s history in the
Commissioned by the French count Jacques d’Adelsward Fersen and built in 1905, the villa
has survived with its romantic aura largely intact; it has the appearance of an enchanted
hideaway. Initially called La Gloriette, it later took the name of Villa Lysis as a tribute to
Lysis, a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. However, the sources of inspiration for the
villa’s design are diverse. The façade imitates that of a classical temple, with a pronaos on
the ground floor, consisting of four columns preceded by a broad staircase. The pronaos
and the exedra at the entrance also reflect the influence of classical architecture, while
the gilt work in the reception room recalls Klimt, Olbrich, and the Viennese Secession;
and the decorative features of the railing along the grand staircase are Art Nouveau.
Now the property of the Municipality of Capri, the villa harmoniously mingles elements of
classical and modern European architecture to create a fascinating ambiance charged with
symbolism.
Visiting hours: from 1 April: 9 am to 1 pm / 2 pm to 6 pm. Closed Sundays.
ROGER VIOLLET/ARCHIVI ALINARI
early decades of the 20th century, new
personalities were now invading Capri,
inaugurating the splendid season of the 1950s
and 1960s.
Peyrefitte was accepted immediately and
many island habitués sought his company.
The writer strolled the narrow lanes in
elegant attire; his urbane wit won him dinner
invitations from all the artists and tycoons
in residence. During the day, by contrast,
Peyrefitte was busy researching the life of
Count Fersen in the library at the Cerio’s
house; its elderly owner, Edwin Cerio, had
been a frequent guest at Villa Lysis, the
luxurious abode Fersen had built for himself
on Capri. More than anything else, however,
Peyrefitte tried to get in contact with all those
who had actually known the count. He was
able to track down very few of them, though,
and practically no one who could be called a
reliable source. He did get some information,
albeit in a watered-down version, from
Fersen’s sister’s daughter, Gaby Capace
Minutolo, the Marquise of Bugnano, who lived
in Naples.
The writer paid many visits to Villa Lysis,
which, long uninhabited and stripped of all
its furnishings, was literally going to wrack
and ruin. Norman Douglas thus described
its condition in 1933: “What it appears to be
today is a sort of fairytale castle, deserted and
completely bare, covered over by - suffocated
by, really - a jungle of trees. He was so fond
of those trees - his pine trees, his holm oaks,
and his mimosa trees, that he wouldn’t let
anyone get near even the smallest twig on
any of them.”
In the peristyle, all that could still be seen
was the inscription: Amori et dolori sacrum,
sacred to love and heartbreak. Even the
splendid garden, which Fersen had spent an
enormous sum of money to create, had been
so long neglected that it was choked with
weeds. Visiting the estate many years later,
Bruce Chatwin had this to say about the ruins
of the villa: “A dream house, where so many
prodigious talents hoped to live, work, and
play out their passions, yet despite the idyllic
setting, the whole place was contaminated by
a morbid atmosphere not unlike Bocklin’s Isle
of the Dead.” In fact, after renting the villa out
for short intervals and residing there in the
1930s and 1940s, the count’s heirs eventually
sold it to a Mexican millionaire of Armenian
origin, Felix Mechoulan, in 1950.
Capri days
Peyrefitte’s stays on the island were long
and unhurried, and given over to the pursuit
of all of life’s pleasures. After an early
morning swim, he routinely had a massage
administered by one Glauco Di Bella, an
attractive youth from Sicily who had learned
the art of massage in Rome and then set up
shop on Capri. Peyrefitte had written Di Bella
a quite affectionate dedication, which the
young man displayed on his shop wall for all
to see: “For Glauco Di Bella, whose name so
perfectly represents his island home,
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