Ewa Kawamura, Capter 10. Tuberculosis, Queerness and Luxury Guests: The Hidden Stories of Capri’s Hotel Quisisana, in Disguising Disease in Italian Political and Visual Culture. From Post-Unification to COVID-19, edited by Sharon Hecker, and Arianna Arisi Rota, Routledge, London and New York, 2024, pp. 151-169

Routledge, London and New York

Today the Grand Hotel Quisisana of Capri in Italy is the one of the most famous luxury hotels in the world. It was founded as the nineteenth-century Villa Quisisana by George Sidney Smith Clark, a Scottish physician, for travelers and invalids recovering from consumption when the Island of Capri was flourishing as a climatic health resort. After his death, how did the Quisisana develop into a luxury hotel, transforming its patients into clients? Some—such as Friedrich Krupp, German steel tycoon—came to Capri to recover from consumption but in reality took advantage of the place to disguise their homosexual behavior. This chapter will examine questions related to the fame of the Quisisana in the belle époque as a protected environment where for the average ill guest, the hope for recovery from disease was supported by successful cultural products, such as author Friedrich Spielhagen’s novel Quisisana (1880). In the early twentieth century, “Quisisana” became a widespread name for hotels, pensions and villas, especially in German-speaking countries, in Europe and America. The internationalized name Quisisana ended up symbolizing mere relaxation and was no longer associated with consumption, erasing the unpleasant origins in contagious infection that this chapter will seek to unearth.