Once the home of the Barons Monti Della Corte, Villa Imperiale on the Island of Capri is one of the few remaining Caprian Villas of the early 19th Century.
A minute's walk from the main square in Anacapri, the villa – all white and very elegantly set in a terraced garden with a peacock-blue pool – has only recently been transformed into a small boutique hotel, also available for private rental. Refurbished by a chic antiquarian-art dealer-owner, she often works as consultant for exhibitions and reviews of artwork from the period, organized both in Italy and abroad. Having been sympathetically restored, and retaining the best of its two hundred year old features, you might expect Villa Imperiale to be lacking some mod cons, but each of the five uniquely decorated suites, named to reflect the important antique pieces that furnish it, has satellite television, a CD/DVD player, high-speed internet access and according to the theme of the room one of the following; a Turkish bath, plunge pool, duplex shower or Jacuzzi bath. The house is pretty much faultless. A 16th-century Turkoman fireplace dominates the dining room and an Indian fountain commissioned by a 19th-century maharaja. Other grand touches: inlaid mosaics, a fabulous art collection – including a Neapolitan sea battle painted by the 18th-century master Leonardo Coccorante. With the proximity of museums and galleries to Villa Imperiale, there is no shortage of interesting activities. However if you just want to sit by the pool and relax, surrounded by trees and flowers, then this too is a tempting option.
There are five en-suite bedrooms in the villa with two additional en-suite bedrooms just steps away from the main house. All bedrooms are uniquely named and decorated according to a theme stemming from each rooms particular period antiques and art collection. The five en-suite rooms in the main villa are: the Artist's Room, the Louis XVI Room, the Voyager's Room, the Venetian Room and the Collector's Room. The two newly constructed en-suite rooms adjacent to the pool area are the Pool Room and the Empire Room, if requested by the client these two rooms can be combined to form the "Garden Suite".