Axel Munthe

In 1881, at the age of 24, Axel Munthe learned of a terrible outbreak of Cholera in Naples and of an acute shortage of doctors to treat the sick. Recently qualified as a doctor he spent all his resources on medicine and took the first available transport to Naples where he worked against the disease for the next two years.

When the epidemic subsided Munthe decided to remain in Italy, settling in Rome in lodgings at Piazza di Spagna, 26, where he continued to treat the poor in the then slum quarter of Trastevere. He later became friends with the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse and it was in Capri that he wrote his best-selling autobiography, The Story of San Michele (1929).