If you're the sort of person who eats, sleeps and dreams designer labels but you can't stretch to the Miami home of the murdered Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, which went on sale six months ago, then you'll be pleased to know that another authentic Versace mansion is up for sale.
Just months after the South Beach mansion - outside of which Gianni was fatally shot in 1997 - was put up for sale with a hefty US$125 million (Dh459.1m) price tag by its hotelier owner, Gianni's brother Santo, the president of the Versace design label, has put his own Milan home on the market for €49 million (Dh240.1m).
Unlike Gianni's flamboyant home, which is covered in frescoes and where even the swimming pool is tiled with 24-carat gold, Santo's home, as befits the business head behind the operations of the vast brand, is much more understated.
Located on the tree-lined Via dei Giardini in Milan's Quadrilatero d'Oro fashion district, Santo Versace's four-storey house, which was designed by the Modernist Movement architects Carlo De Carli and Antonio Carminati in 1953, hides a massive 2,100-square-metre home behind a discreet exterior.
Inside, Santo has decorated the mansion, which is arranged along an unusual partially octagonal floor plan with a contemporary Versace style that includes mosaics in many of the bathrooms.
The home also includes a 300-square-metre rooftop terrace and 442 square metres of gardens.
"There is simply no other property like it in Milan - either on or off the market," says Lorenzo Mercolini, the managing director of the Milan office of Sotheby's International Realty, which is marketing the property. "This unique house is an urban refuge with four spacious levels of tranquil living space, situated in a rarely found green and leafy location at the heart of the city's bustling centre."
But, if this isn't your cup of tea, Gianni's former home is still on the market and, according to local property brokers, the asking price has been reduced to $100m.
