Capri information
In January 1806, French troops occupied the island. The British ousted the French troops that May; Capri was turned into a powerful naval base (a "Second Gibraltar"), but the building program caused heavy damage to the archaeological sites. Joachim Murat reconquered Capri in 1808, and the French remained there until the end of the Napoleonic era (1815), when Capri was returned to the Bourbon ruling house of Naples.
In the latter half of the 19th century, Capri became a popular resort for European artists, writers and other celebrities. John Singer Sargent and Frank Hyde are among the prominent artists who stayed on the island around the late 1870s. Sargent is best known for his series of portraits featuring the beautiful local model, Rosina Ferrara.
Also in the 19th century, the natural scientist Ignazio Cerio catalogued the flora and fauna of the island. This work was continued by his son, the author and engineer Edwin Cerio, who wrote several books on life in Capri in the 20th century.
Norman Douglas, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, Christian Wilhelm Allers, Emil von Behring, Curzio Malaparte, Axel Munthe, and Maxim Gorky are all reported to have owned a villa there, or to have stayed there for more than three months. Swedish Queen Victoria often stayed there. Rose O'Neill, the American illustrator and creator of the Kewpie, owned the Villa Narcissus,formerly owned by the famous Beaux Art painter Charles Caryl Coleman.Gracie Fields also had a villa on the island, though her 1934 song "The Isle of Capri" was written by two Englishmen. Mariah Carey owns a villa on the island.
The book that spawned the 19th century fascination with Capri in France, Germany, and England was Entdeckung der Blauen Grotte auf der Insel Capri, 'Discovery of the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri', by the German painter and writer August Kopisch, in which he describes his 1826 stay on Capri and his (re)discovery of the Blue Grotto. Capri is also the setting for "The Lotus Eater", a short-story by Somerset Maugham. In the story, the protagonist from Boston comes to Capri on a holiday and is so enchanted by the place he gives up his job and decides to spend the rest of his life in leisure at Capri. Claude Debussy refers to the island's hills in the title of his impressionistic prélude Les collines d'Anacapri (1910).
As well as being a haven for writers and artists, Capri served as a relatively safe place for foreign gay men and lesbians to lead a more open life, and a small nucleus of them were attracted to live there, overlapping to some extent with the creative types mentioned above. The 19th century poet August Graf von Platen was one of the first. Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen wrote the roman à clef Et le feu s’èteignit sur le mer (1910) about Capri and its residents in the early 20th century, causing a minor scandal. Fersen's life on Capri became the subject of Roger Peyrefitte's fictionalised biography, L'Exile de Capri. One of the island's most famous foreign inhabitants was Norman Douglas; his novel South Wind is a thinly fictionalised description of Capri's residents and visitors, and a number of his other works, both books and pamphlets, deal with the island, including Capri (1930) and his last work, A Footnote on Capri (1952). A satirical presentation of the island's lesbian colony in the 1920s is made in Compton Mackenzie's novel Extraordinary Women (1928).
Memoirs set on Capri include Edwin Cerio's Aria di Capri (1928) (translated as That Capri Air), which contains a number of historical and biographical essays on the island, including a tribute to Norman Douglas; The Story of San Michele (1929) by the Swedish royal physician Axel Munthe (1857–1949), who built a villa of that name; An Impossible Woman: The Memoirs of Dottoressa Moor (1975) by Elisabeth Moor, who worked there as a doctor from 1926 until the 1970s; and Shirley Hazzard's Graham on Capri: A Memoir (2000), about her reminiscences of Graham Greene.
Novels set on Capri include the eponymous Kapri (1939), by the Latvian novelist J?nis Jaunsudrabi?š, who represents the island as a sort of prison for Europeans who have run away from their normal lives and responsibilities, and I Love Capri by Belinda Jones.
Anacapri is a Community on the island of Capri, in the province of Naples, Italy. Administratively, it has a separate status from the city of Capri. The most important sight in the village is the Villa San Michele.
French composer Claude Debussy was a regular visitor to Anacapri. He even named one of his preludes from the first book, No.5 "Les collines d'Anacapri", in homage to the community.
There is a bus service, via numerous hairpin bends, from Marina Grande and Capri to Anacapri.
One of the tourist attractions in Anacapri is the chairlift (seggiovia) to 589-m Monte Solaro for picturesque views of the south-facing coast.
