The Most Expensive House in France didn’t sell – or did it?

A few weeks ago, the Daily Express, who’s tagline is “The World’s Greatest Newspaper,” reported that Roman Abramovich had agreed to purchase La Leopolda, a magnificent Villa near Nice for the king’s ransom of:

Five Hundred Million Euros

Living just down the road from said villa, I was sure I would have heard something about this, so I decided to do some digging and lo and behold – not true. Of course, one of the advantages of publishing online instead of print is – if you screw up and report something incorrectly – you can just delete the post. I won’t say I have never done it myself.

They had actually got just about everything wrong. It wouldn’t have been the world’s most expensive house in any case, and compared to the monstrosity Mukesh Ambani is building in Bombay, decidedly cheap.

Now The Times is reporting that the house did sell – to a mystery Russian buyer and real estate agents up and down the French coast are rushing out for Russian language lessons as we speak. These are the few photos I was able to find of the property.

Photo credit

La Leopolda’s gardens cover 10 acres and requires the attentions of 50 gardeners, and as some one else remarked, the gates are worth more than my house.

Edit – Update on the Villa La Leopolda Price

EDIT – Update Number 2 – Russian buyer, Prokorov  pulls out of sale