Villa Lysis

Fersen purchased the 12,000 square metres (130,000 sq ft) plot in 1904 for 15,000 lire from the Salvia family.[2] The villa's designer is unknown; for many years it was believed that French artist Edouard Chimot had designed the structure (due to his involvement in a trial following an accident at the construction site); however, a recent analysis of letters from Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen to Chimot shows that Chimot did not perform that design.[3] The garden around the villa was designed by Mimi Ruggiero, who planted the laurel and myrtle in honor of Venus[2] The house was described in detail by Roger Peyrefitte in his novel The Exile of Capri (1959), a fictionalized account of Adelswärd-Fersen's years on Capri together with his lover Nino Cesarini.

Garden sculpture at Villa Lysis

Fersen became addicted to opium on a trip to Ceylon during construction of the house (Peyrefitte relates that a worker was killed during construction, and Fersen decided to travel until the local anger against at him had subsided[4]) and after World War I he started using cocaine. He eventually committed suicide in 1923 by ingesting an overdose of cocaine.[5] After Fersen's death, the villa was left first to his sister Germaine, but with the usufruct left to Nino Cesarini. Cesarini sold the rights for 200,000 lire to Germaine and went to live in Rome. Germaine later gave the villa to her daughter, the Countess of Castelbianco. The Countess sold the villa to the millionaire Felix Mechoulan.[2]

Maintenance and upkeep of the villa ceased after 1934, so the house was essentially in ruins by the 1980s. In 1989, the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage decreed the building a historical monument. The building was restored in the 1990s by the Lysis Funds Association (founded in 1986 by Neapolitan gallery owner Lucio Amelio) and the Municipality of Capri. Tuscan architect Marcello Quiriconi and Jacques Fersen biographer Roger Peyrefitte supervised the work. All the stucco decorations were restored by Capri artist Antonio Senesi, grandson of the Senesi who decorated the villa during its original construction. In 1995, the Mechoulan family sold the villa to the lawyer Manfredonia, who resold it in 1998 to an American businessman of Italian descent Armando Campione, who never lived in the villa, dying in the hit-and-run accident in Tahiti in soon after purchase. The villa was finally purchased by the Municipality of Capri in January 2001.[2] Since the restoration, Villa Lysis has been open to tourists. It may be rented for special occasions, and cultural events have taken place there, such as an exhibition of photographs by Wilhelm von Gloeden in 2009.[6] In March 2010, the villa was put up for sale,[7] listed as being 450 square metres (4,800 sq ft) with a 12,000 square metres (130,000 sq ft) garden.[8]