You’d be lucky to buy a two-bed flat for less than £700,000 in central London.
Even if you’re looking further afield, a terraced or semi-detached house in the capital costs more than £830,000 on average.
But in the rolling hills outside Milan, you could bag a 29-bedroom hilltop castle, with six bathrooms, for £665,000.
Have you ever imagined you were Timothée Chalamet frolicking in the grass, cycling tree-lined lanes and lounging sun-kissed by a pool in Call Me By Your Name?
That could be your reality as the new owner of Castello di Valdengo.
Its statue-lined patio and terraced gardens overlook an eponymous village just an hour drive from Milan, the financial and fashion capital of Italy, with a steady flow of wine for the Aosta Valley.
From a turret on top, you can survey the plains to the south and the rolling foothills of the Alps to the north.
Its red tile roof is in need of some care. In fact, estate agent Sotheby’s warns it and some floors ‘need to be completely redone’, which they somewhat euphemistically call an ‘integral intervention’.
That’s hardly surprising for a sprawling palace dating to the Middle Ages in its oldest parts.
Spread across four storeys, Castello di Valdengo is so big it’s currently only inhabited in part of the ground floor containing a living room, kitchen and dining room.
From there you can waltz out onto a 360m2 patio, with potted plants and a well, that’s just begging for you to host a dinner party.
Up a ‘monumental staircase’ you’ll find first floor dedicated entirely to bedrooms, with a southwest flank of French windows opening onto a nearly full-length balcony.
Walls vary between painted cream and red patterned wallpaper, the floors are marbled tiles, or wooden planks laid with carpet.
Chandeliers dangling from frescoed ceilings hark back to ‘the historical beauty and the traces of the noble origins’, according to Sotheby’s.
With some elbow grease and cash in your coffers, it could be restored to its former glory with some much-needed modernisation of some features.
Should you get bored of renovations, the castle is only an hour drive from the winding mountain lake of Como, and the pyramid peak of the Matterhorn on the Swiss border.
Whether you like skiing, swimming or a luxurious life of gluttony, perhaps Castello di Valdengo is the place for you.
It’ll certainly be cheaper per square metre than anything you’ll find in London.
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