12/13/2009

CARLA BRUNI SARKOZY’S ITALIAN CHILDHOOD HOME UP FOR SALE





 

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the world’s wealthiest men, is now fiipping the Castello di Castagneto Po in the hills northeast of Turin. The wife of French head-of-state Nicolas Sarkozy spent her early childhood living in the property but the family relocated to Paris in the early 1970’s as The Red Brigade Marxist guerrilla group stuck fear among Italy’s elite and sent death threats.  The family sold it to the Prince earlier this year.

The castle is 21,000 sq ft, has 40 rooms that  the family extensively restored and lavishly appointed in 1952.   There are 185 acres with vegetable gardens, orchids, flowering terraces, ancient greenhouses, a caretaker’s house and barn.  The castle was destroyed in 1705 in warfare, and rebuilt in neo-Gothic style in 1835.  The imposing façade brings up images of fairy tale princesses. The property was sold for about $30.96MM, purchased for about $27.5MM by the  Prince.  Bruni-Sarkozy’s industrialist father, Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, paid less than one million British pounds in 1952. 

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