Villa Les Cèdres, an 18,000 square-foot estate in the South of France has emerged as the most expensive house in the world as it is worth up to £315 million.
The owner, Italian distiller Davide Campari-Milano SpA, is betting that the house’s combination of history, luxury, and a prime location along the coast of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat will be enough to make it the most expensive residential sale in history.
It was once owned by Belgian King Leopold II, who bought the glorious patch – along the coast of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat – in 1904 after becoming exorbitantly wealthy from his savage exploitation of the Congo Free State.
It had previously been owned by the mayor of Villefranche-sur-Mer and was used as a farm for olive trees.
Villa Les Cèdres a 14-bedroom mansion with 35 acres of land, has one of the most beautiful gardens in Europe, which includes manicured lawns, 15,000 plants and 20 greenhouses containing rare tropical vegetation.
The palatial home features a ballroom, an Olympic-size swimming pool and stables for up to 30 horses.
Close neighbours include British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
It is now owned by Italian distiller Davide Campari-Milano SpA, which owns Campari and Grand Marnier liqueurs.
It has previously been spoken of as being worth £900million, but Fabio Di Fede – the managing director of Société des Produits Marnier Lapostolle – told Bloomberg that price tag is ‘absurd rumour and folly’.
The exterior’s light salmon-and-sand color is influenced by the style of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which ruled Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat until 1860. The high vantage point of the rooftop offers panoramic views of Villefranche-sur-Mer, the viaduct bridge near the medieval town of Eze Village, and far to the east, the Alps separating France and Italy
The Maritime Alps loom in the distance.
A sitting room on the ground floor provides a reminder of the home’s former owners, especially King Leopold II, whose blue-and-gold sigil is mounted on one of the silk-covered walls. Portraits of his infamous mistress, Blanche Delacroix, a former cabaret dancer he later ennobled, hang here as well. The floors support immense fireplaces of wood and marble, as well as one almost 12 feet tall and made of stone. An inscription at the top bears the initials M.L., for the Marnier-Lapostolle family. Beyond the open doors toward the back is an equally grand dining room.
The upstairs bedroom. The home’s old-fashioned interiors will likely be gutted and redone by a new owner—that’s not what they’re paying a premium for. “It’s a very unique property, but not well-known, as you can’t see the villa from any of the nearby roads—it’s impossible to imagine the beauty of the house and the ampleness of the land surrounding it,’’ Di Fede says. Properties of such a scale and rarity change hands only once or twice every decade, 
Among the features unique to the 35-acre property are the 14,000 plant species in its gardens. Teissier, the chief gardener, estimates that a third of them are scattered in the open garden; the other two-thirds are housed in the estate’s 25 greenhouses.
Leave a Reply