War diarist's 18th- century palace and Tuscan farm are both on the market in Italy, writes ANDY DEVANE
ROME: €32MA ROMAN palace owned by an Anglo-Irish writer – which was briefly home to Ireland's embassy to the Holy See from 2004 to 2005 – is for sale for €32 million.
The family of Iris Origo is selling Palazzo Orsini, a Renaissance palace built on top of an ancient Roman theatre, as well as Val’Orcia, a five-bedroom farmhouse near Siena in Tuscany.
The farmhouse, part of the Orsini’s La Foce estate in the Unesco Val DOrcia, is for sale for €2.4 million.
Origo,who died in 1988, is best-known for writing War in the Val d'Orcia: An Italian War Diary, an account of her wartime experiences, when she sheltered refugee children and escaped Allied prisoners on the Tuscan estate.
Origo spent part of her youth in her grandfather Lord Desart’s Kilkenny home, Desart Court, burned down by the IRA in 1923. She and her husband, Italian aristocrat Antonio Origo, bought the palace in the early 1950s.
Palazzo Orsini was built in the 18th century by the Orsini family on top of the still-standing stone and marble shell of the Theatre of Marcellus, which dates from the 1st century BC, and resembles a mini-Colosseum.
The palazzo is a 1,068sq m (11,495sq ft) property divided into three main areas: the main apartment, a separate penthouse and cellars.
The main apartment includes three en suite bedrooms and staterooms, and four of the principal rooms – the main salon, library, dining room and ballroom – are decorated with frescoes. All four open onto a large central garden with orange trees and a 16th-century fountain.
There is a one-bedroom penthouse, connected to the main apartment by a private staircase, with staff quarters and three parking spaces. Lastly, beneath the building’s Colosseum-esque arches, are 430sq m (4,628sq ft) cellars.
The Irish Embassy to the Holy See (now closed) was located within Palazzo Orsini from August 2004 to July 2005, while its permanent seat underwent renovations.
The then ambassador (and poet) Philip McDonagh – currently Ireland’s ambassador to Russia – remembers with obvious fondness the place he and his family called home for a year. “We were always conscious of the wonderful history of the palazzo.”
As for Origo’s personal library, Ambassador McDonagh says “There was never enough time to explore the books or to sit in the garden onto which the doors of the library opened.”
Gemma Bruce from British-based luxury real-estate agents Aylesford International ( ayles ford.com)is overseeing the sale, advertised at €32 million. Aside from the grand state rooms she says the property is "very homely and liveable".
Although a listed building, subject to strict planning regulations by Italy’s culture ministry, Bruce said its cellars “could be converted into a gym, a health spa or a wine cellar – it would be an amazing place for wine tastings”.
The other Orsini property for sale, Val d’Orcia farmhouse near Siena, is a five-bedroom property in the middle of open farmland, surrounded by fields of wheat and sunflowers on one side and a small wood on the other.
The restored farmhouse has a large living room with an adjacent kitchen with a traditional Tuscan kitchen range, five en suite bedrooms, a pool and pool house, a garden kitchen for outdoor meals with a pergola covered in vines and wisteria providing shade over a large table.
