Rome Carla Bruni’s family castle in Italy has been sold to an Arab sheikh for €9 million (£8 million). Fittings from the 40-room Castello di Castagneto Po near Turin fetched €10 million at an earlier auction in London, La Stampa newspaper reported. The French First Lady’s father, the billionaire industrialist Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, bought the castle in 1952.
The property was jointly owned by the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, her mother and film actress and director sister Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Her mother, Marisa, said yesterday: “We had finished with Castagneto Po – nobody went there any more.” (AFP)
The nationality of the French First Lady, who moved with her family to Paris as a child, is another outstanding question for Italians. In her TV appearance Sunday she tried to clear up the matter, explaining that she had automatically gained French citizenship when she married Sarkozy but kept her Italian citizenship. “I’m Italo-French,” she said. “I would have had to ask to renounce my Italian nationality, which of course I wouldn’t want to do.” Along with performances of several songs and inside secrets about life with the French President, Bruni’s charm offensive on Italian TV looked like it might woo her native country.
But it lasted less than 24 hours. The next evening, Striscia della Notizia, a hugely popular prime-time gotcha journalism show, dug up the video from Bruni’s Nov. 18 appearance on the David Letterman Show:
Dave: So do you still have the dual citizenship?
Carla: No, I’m just French.
Dave: Are the Italians Ok with that?
Carla: I think they’re OK. You cannot keep the double nationality.
For now, assuming Bruni holds on to her Italian passport, she may want to look for an Italian PR firm too.
