Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman was recently officially outed as the purchaser of a mini-Versailles: a 57-acre, $300 million chateau near Paris. The Prince quietly purchased the estate about two years ago.
The estate is called the Chateau Louis XIV, and features a moat with a glass chamber for viewing the day-to-day activities of the estate’s koi and sturgeon population. The house is designed in the style of the Sun King, but its pedigree is far less historic: the developer who sold it to the Royal Prince, also a Saudi, razed the existing 19th-century castle to build Versailles, Jr.
The home’s actual selling price is $301 million; every million counts, even if, like Salman, your purchases in 2015 also included a 440-foot, $500 million yacht which famously went aground a year later whilst a party raged like a cyclone on her decks. The Prince may also be the secret buyer of the late-period da Vinci ‘Salvator Mundi,’ which sold at auction last month for well over $450 million.
The $301 million sale price of the French estate appears to be a world record for a residential sale. The estate is situated in Louveciennes. The property’s long list of usual features includes a hedge maze, iPhone-controlled fountains, marble statues galore, a home cinema the size of a real cinema, an aquarium, extensive, formal baroque gardens, and the caves de Louis XIV: the wine cellar.
