4 Best Sights in Capri, Ischia, and Procida, Italy

Capri is famous for its villas built by artists, millionaires, and poets who became willing prisoners of Capri during the Gilded Age. Elihu Vedder, Charles Coleman, Lord Algernon, and the Wolcott-Perry sisters were some of the people who constructed lavish Aesthetic Movement houses. Built by the American colonel J.C. MacKowen, this particular villa, near the center of Anacapri, was erected between 1876 and 1899. With walls hued in distinctive Pompeian red, the villa incorporates a noted 15th-century Aragonese tower. A historian and archaeologist, MacKowen wrote a guide to Capri and brought to light marble fragments and statues inside the Blue Grotto, thus revealing and validating its importance as a nymphaeum in Roman times; the statues are displayed here. Local legend says that Anacapri's menfolk locked their women in Casa Rossa when they went to work in Naples, but the villa now houses a permanent exhibition called "The Painted Island," featuring 32 canvases from masters such as Brancaccio and Carelli, depicting images of Capri in the 19th and 20th centuries. A collection of oils by 20th-century Milan landscape artist Carlo Perindani was added in 2015. Don't miss the views from the highest roof terrace in central Anacapri, taking in Monte Solaro and Ischia.

Opened to the public in 2003, this legendary villa was originally known as the Villa Fersen, after Baron Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen, the builder. Fleeing to the island from a scandal involving Parisian schoolboys, the French aristocrat had this white stucco pile designed by Edouard Chimot in 1903 in shimmering Belle Époque style, replete with gilded-mosaic columns and floors looted from the island's ancient Roman sites. Past the impressive columned entrance, inscribed in stone with "Amori et Dolori Sacrum" (A Shrine to Love and Sorrow), the baron would retire to write poems and paint pictures in his Stile Liberty ("Liberty Style," or Art Nouveau) salons. Sadly all the furnishings are gone, but you can still gasp at the ballroom open to the sea and the large smoking room in the basement, where, in a tiled pool, Fersen committed suicide by ingesting a lethal mix of opium and Champagne in 1923. Outside are magical terraces with views to rival the adjacent Villa Jovis.

From Anacapri's Piazza Vittoria, picturesque Via Capodimonte leads to Villa San Michele, the charming former home of Swedish doctor and philanthropist Axel Munthe (1857–1949), and which Henry James called "the most fantastic beauty, poetry, and inutility that one had ever seen clustered together." At the ancient entranceway to Anacapri at the top of the Scala Fenicia, the villa is set around Roman-style courtyards, marble walkways, and atria. Rooms display the doctor's varied collections, which range from bric-a-brac to antiquities. Medieval choir stalls, Renaissance lecterns, and gilded statues of saints are all part of the setting, with some rooms preserving the doctor's personal memorabilia. A spectacular pergola path overlooking the entire Bay of Naples leads from the villa to the famous Sphinx Parapet, where an ancient Egyptian sphinx looks out toward Sorrento: you cannot see its face—on purpose. It is said that if you touch the sphinx's hindquarters with your left hand while making a wish, it will come true. The parapet is connected to the little Chapel of San Michele, on the grounds of one of Tiberius's villas.

Besides hosting summer concerts, the Axel Munthe Foundation carries out ornithological research in the surrounding area and has an ecomuseum that fittingly reflects Munthe's fondness for animals. Here you can learn about various bird species—accompanied by their songs—found on Capri. Munthe bought up the hillside and made it a sanctuary for birds, and today this little realm is still an Eden.

The foundation also organizes weekly guided visits (Thursday afternoon April–October; call to reserve a place) of the ruined Barbarossa castle, almost clinging to the side of the cliff above Villa San Michele. Dating to the late 10th century, when Capri was ruled by the ancient maritime republic of Amalfi, and named after the admiral of the Turkish fleet, Khair-Eddin, or Barbarossa (Redbeard), who stormed and took the castle in 1535, much of the original layout has been changed over the centuries.

Nicknamed the Casa Come Me (House Like Myself) and perched out on the rocky Punta Massullo, this villa is considered by some historians to be a great monument of 20th-century architecture. Built low to be part of the ageless landscape, the red-hue villa was designed in Rationalist style by the Roman architect Adalberto Libera in the late 1930s for its owner Curzio Malaparte (author of the novel La Pelle, which recounts various World War II experiences in Naples). Unfortunately, the aesthetic concerns of the villa are inextricably entailed with political ones: Curzio Malaparte was a full-blown fascist, and the only reason why this house was allowed to be built along this otherwise unsullied stretch of coast was by special fiat from none other than Mussolini. Malaparte was unhappy with the design and made a number of alterations during the construction phase, including the famous trapezoidal staircase that seems to grow out of the roof. The villa is private, but if you want to see it up close, it was featured as a suitably striking backdrop for Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard's underrated film Contempt (1963).