LOCATION: (West of) Marbella, Malaga Province, Andalusia, Spain
PRICE: £4,613,800
SIZE: 5,900 square meters, 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This morning Your Mama awoke to a kindly communique from a fancy-schmancy P.R. lady in London who thoughtfully let us know via press release that His Not-Actually-Royal Music Industry Highness Prince put an characteristically lavish estate he owns in Marbella—that's on the Mediterranean coast in the south of Spain for all the geographically challenged—up for sale with an asking price of £4,613,800. (Our currency conversion contraption indicates that amount equals, €5,5,609,420, $7,753,080 or 15,973 Bitcoins.)
So goes the story as told in the press release, Mister Prince originally acquired the hill topping estate in 1998 as a wedding gift for his then wife, Mayte Garcia. Their intertwined monograms appear throughout the property, which may or may not thrill the next owner, and there is an "enormous portrait of the couple in the main hall." (That isn't something everyone wants prominently displayed in their foyer, a posed portrait of Prince and his first wife? No?) The press release goes on to say that after the sudden death of his week-old son and the subsequent breakdown of his marriage, Mister Prince, "resolved never to set foot in the house again." Miz Mayte, on the other hand, apparently made "occasional use of it at weekends."*
Online listing details show the two-story, flesh-toned and marble balustraded villa sits down a long private drive on a 5,900 square meter parcel—that's about 1.46 acres as per Your Mama's rudimentary tabulations—west of Marbella in the wealthy hills of El Paraíso. (A smokey-voice real estate agent gives a video tour of the property here.)
There are a total of six bedrooms and six bathrooms, according to online marketing materials, including five guest bedrooms and an unrevealed number of bathrooms on the upper level. The celebrity-sized master suite—not pictured in listing photos we perused—sprawls across two levels and is entered through what listing details rather curiously call a "fantasy door." That's right, a fantasy door. There's a canopied bed with—as one might imagine—a lurid and achingly cliche mirrored ceiling and the bathroom—at least we think it's the master bathroom—is sheathed floor and walls with a grey-veined blush pink marble. The bathroom is way too showy for Your Mama's far less glitzy personal taste in crapper day-core, but the color and veining of that marble is kind of special. Anyways...
There are, as per listing details, lustrous marble floors and air conditioning throughout the main floor living spaces that include a pretty nearly histrionic, many-sided double-height entrance hall—it could have eight or even ten sides, we can't quite tell—that features a double staircase with marble balustrades and what appears to be a bridge that traverses the voluminous space.
A series of tall, arched French doors in the sunny and glitzy formal dining room and the (unfortunately also flesh-toned) formal living room as well as the adjoining breakfast room open to large terraces with panoramic views that sweep over hills and valleys to the shimmery blue of the Mediterranean in the distance. The almost clinically unadorned kitchen looks fully Euro-contemporary with a rigorously adhered to white and crimson color scheme, glossy cabinets with nary a pull to be seen, and high-grade stainless steel appliances.
The entire property is ringed by a high wall and a dense row of cypress trees and is fitted and kitted with a comprehensive security system that includes both outdoor and indoor surveillance cameras because, children, Prince don't fool around when it comes to security, even at a residence he swore never to step foot in again. Other luxuries and amenities include a dedicated security room, a generator, water tanks, irrigation system, private water well, an elaborate lighting program both indoors and out, and, somewhere up in there, a two-chair hair and make-up salon.
Mister Prince has probably owned a number of glammy residences all over the globe but he makes his home in the affluent suburbs of Minneapolis, MN. In Chanhassen he owns a couple of adjoining lake-front parcels where there was once a purple house called Purple House where some say his father lived and that was razed in 2003. He owns another couple of adjacent parcels in Chanhassen where a house once stood and also appears to have been razed. Also in his property portfolio, a modest house on a leafy street in Chanhassen, the famous Paisley Park Studio complex (also in Chanhassen) plus a couple more fairly humble houses on the western edge of Minneapolis proper.
*Something about that timeline just doesn't seem quite right since Mister Prince and Miz Mayte were married in 1996, their infant son—may he rest in peace—died in 1996, and they announced their divorce in 1998, the same year the press release says he purchased the place as a wedding present. But anyways...
listing photos: LuxuryEstate.com
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