Posts Tagged ‘prince alwaleed bin talal’

The historic home in the Italian hills where French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy spent her early childhood is staking a “for sale” sign once again, just months after a Saudi billionaire bought the palatial property for $25 million.

Now the buyer, who has since been revealed as billionaire Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has relisted the historic castle with an affiliate of Christie’s Great Estates with a reported asking price of about 19 million Euros ($28 million).

Castello di Castagneto Po is in the hills northeast of Turin where Bruni-Sarkozy lived before the family relocated to Paris in the early 1970s as Marxist guerrilla groups struck fear among Italy’s elite.

The 40-room, 21,000-sq.-ft. Castello di Castagneto Po has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt over the years but is believed to first date from the year 1019.

The castle was rebuilt in neo-Gothic style ending in 1835, having been destroyed in 1705 following two centuries of French army invasions.

According to Reuters, Bruni’s father, the billionaire industrialist Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, bought the historic estate in 1952 for about $1.5 million.

It is surrounded by 175 acres replete with vegetable gardens, orchards, flowering terraces, ancient greenhouses, a caretaker’s house and a farm building.