![\"\"](\"http:\/\/juliekrealestateblog.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/08\/casa-malaparte.jpg\" "\\"Casa")
<\/a><\/p>\nCould there be a more ravishing work of architecture than Casa Malaparte? \u201cA beautiful thing, forged out of a brutal environment,\u201d is how architect Simon Jacobsen describes this minimalist plinth of a house, built in\u00a01942 atop a craggy promontory on the island of Capri. \u201cIt makes you think of Greta Garbo\u2019s famous line, \u2018I want to be alone.\u2019 \u201d Its owner did, by all accounts. Curzio\u00a0Malaparte\u00a0was a brash man of letters who fell afoul of Mussolini in 1933 and was exiled to a speck of land in the Mediterranean. Banishment had a paradoxical effect: Upon his release, Malaparte\u00a0longed for more remoteness and seclusion. After buying a site on Capri\u2019s eastern coastline, he had the noted architect Adalberto\u00a0Libera draw up plans for a home, but later threw them out in favor of his own vision\u2014a stolid, jutting form, with a lyrical windbreak\u00a0on top and a tapering exterior staircase. \u201cA house like me,\u201d Malaparte\u00a0often said. Today the dwelling is owned by the writer\u2019s heirs and most easily seen by boat (or by revisiting Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s 1963 film Contempt,<\/em> in which the roof provides a sunbathing venue for Brigitte Bardot). Interior designer Steven Volpe got a rare private invitation years ago and remembers walking the tortuous footpath, touring the hauntingly spartan rooms\u2014and, most vividly, climbing to the rooftop. \u201cUp there it was dream-like,\u201d he recalls. \u201cYou feel like you\u2019re in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n