It’s Queen Camilla’s dream home: a sprawling palace on a sun-drenched hill in Tuscany with stunning views of the city of Florence.
Camilla spent her childhood holidays here with her brother Mark and sister Annabel, playing hide-and-seek in the huge frescoed rooms and running freely around the spacious grounds dotted with ancient statues.
The Villa dell’Ombrellino, occupied by the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei in the 16th century, was built in 1372.
It was bought a hundred years ago with cash bequeathed to his mistress Alice Keppel, Camilla’s great-grandmother, by King Edward VII, and during Alice’s lifetime the place became a magnet for passing European royalty.
Edward VII purchased the Villa dell’Ombrellino, in cash, for his mistress, Alice Keppel.
A portrait of Alice Keppel, wife of George Keppel. Alice was Camilla’s great-grandmother.
Edward VII, centre, is photographed during a stay at Rufford House, near Doncaster, as a guest of Lady Savile in 1906. The king’s mistress, Alice Keppel, is fourth from the left.
The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei once occupied the house overlooking Florence.
Three-hour lunches on the terrace were served by waves of servants, champagne corks were popped, and gossip revolved only around people with a title.
“Ombrellino fulfilled Mrs. Keppel’s status fantasies,” a friend recalled; and indeed his life in this Italian paradise was nothing less than a royal court in exile.
Now, the huge building lies empty and abandoned, with rusted doors and peeling paint: a white elephant of a palace that no one wants. No one has lived there for 20 years and no one wants to.
It’s on the market… and it’s yours for just £23 million.
To this day, Camilla regrets the fact that her mother Rosalind Shand made the decision to sell it in 1972 and, on a visit to Florence a few years ago, told the Daily Mail’s Rebecca English: “It’s a tragedy.” I feel like she should start a campaign to buy it back.”
This sparked a flurry of gossip in the ancient Italian city that Camilla was relying on her husband Charles to add Ombrellino to her bulging property portfolio.
But it seems that Charles didn’t cough. And from that day until today, the place has remained desolate and abandoned.
“No one wants to buy the Villa dell’Ombrellino,” a neighbor on the Bellosguardo hill where the property sits said this week. ‘The property is a commercial disaster. Nobody wants to live there.
“Downstairs there are huge rooms with high ceilings, while upstairs there are smaller rooms but fewer, two living rooms for each bedroom, and this is all very impractical.”
The neighbor continued: ‘The gardens were designed by the famous Cecil Pinsent and contained a collection of trees from all over the world.
‘There were azaleas in huge terracotta pots, but the trees are gone and vandals destroyed the azalea vases.
‘When Mrs Shand sold the property, the building was leased to the famous Gran Caffè Doney, where the rich and famous used to gather in Florence, but she never moved there.
“Eventually Deutsche Bank took over the building and the rooms were sublet as office space to various companies, including Brooks Brothers.
“They hosted some conferences, events and receptions there, but eventually they closed the place and it remained empty for more than 20 years.”
Camilla, during a visit to Florence a few years ago, mourned her loss: “It’s a tragedy.” I feel like she should start a campaign to buy it back.
A view of the beautiful Tuscan landscape.
After Alice Keppel’s death in 1947, the house was inherited by her second daughter, Violet Trefusis, whose lesbian elopement with the writer Vita Sackville-West shocked London society in the 1920s and forced Mrs. Keppel, who was already at odds with the royal court because the current king, George V, disapproved of it, to distance itself from Britain.
However, Alice maintained a permanent suite at The Ritz hotel in London, with plenty of adjacent staff quarters, and moved there permanently during the war.
It is said locally that the Germans used Ombrellino to torture prisoners after the surrender of Italy in September 1943 and before August 1944, when Florence was liberated.
Violet Trefusis, second daughter of Alice Keppel, was famous as a writer and lover of the author and garden designer Vita Sackville-West.
If it was, Mrs. Keppel never knew.
He returned to Ombrellino in 1946 and it was there, a year later, that he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Her long-suffering husband, George, who had endured many of his wife’s infidelities (apart from her long affair with the king), was so heartbroken that he died there two months later.
So the house has a history. And now it’s all yours, for just £23 million.