A small but white-hot firestorm of speculation was ignited in Italy on September 20 as weekly magazine Oggi — aka “Today,” an approximation in Italy of the American weekly People — published an article maintaining that idyllic Lago Como’s notable expat citizen, one George Clooney, was definitely selling the Villa Oleandra. For a price somewhere in the stratosphere north of $100 million. This conflagration jumped the Atlantic over the weekend of September 23-4 as the U.S. outlets, among them the U.S. edition of People, picked up the story.
Whereupon the Clooneys themselves lodged a very different opinion, namely, that the estate — which Mr. Clooney has grown to include four houses, including the grand 25-room main, historical Villa Oleandra — was definitely not for sale. Now actually quoting official representatives of the Clooneys, People walked its first, breathless story back on Sunday, September 24. The Clooneys stated, through their representative, that they first became aware that they had put the house up for sale via the New York Post‘s Page Six, historically speaking, one of the faster-breaking American news outlets.
So far, so good. But. In matters in Italy involving the widely beloved Mr. Clooney, and very much especially in the reporting of matters in Italy involving Mr. Clooney during which Mr. Clooney (and/or his official representatives) were not consulted, the Italian reporting itself deserves close study.
The “accelerant” — or ignition point — in this firestorm was played by Yasemin Baysal, a realtor with responsibility for northern Italy for high-end firm Engel and Völkers who, she confessed to Oggi, seems to have now (or to have had) at least one iron in that fire in the form of a client who was “very interested” in buying the Villa Oleandra and its accumulated collection of houses.
Ms. Baysal cited — but would not name — a Milanese realtor who (reportedly) carries the (according to Ms. Baysal), 100-million-euro listing. And in classic ‘buying-realtor’ form on behalf of that real or imagined Engel and Völkers client, she succeeded brilliantly in making sure to slip in a hefty beatdown of the (reported) listed price as she emphasized to the Oggi editors that her valuation of the property was more in the range of 60-to-70-million euros. Nice pirouette, Signora Baysal! No moss gathering on that stone.
The next step in the firestorm — again, before the Clooneys weighed in with their denial — circled a bit closer into the (imagined) family dynamic. And it was purely an editorial move, in the form of analysis in the Oggi dispatch that collected “indiscrezione” — or indiscretions in the form of rumors — indicating that Mrs. Clooney would be pushing for such a sale since the territory (Como, the lake, the village of Laglio) were not as much to the lady’s liking for reasons including the lake’s quietness and the village’s general lack of fabulosity. As opposed to Provence, on the Cote d’Azur, where, the Oggi editors were at pains to point out, there is much star-studded gadding about, and it’s where Clooneys have purchased a getaway.
True, as a child of the Levant, and by definition a French-speaker, Mrs. Clooney would naturally feel at home on the Med in its southern France iteration and that, reasonably, can have been a motive for a south-of-France purchase — it lets their swimming-age twins Ella and Alexander pad about in an ocean from a real beach, salt water and beaches being in short supply on the Italian alpine lakes. But few people — and specifically neither of the Clooneys — would suggest that 32,000-plus square feet of mansion space in sub-Alpine Italy was an either/or proposition with a summer place in Provence. It’s apples and oranges. It can very well be that, at some indeterminate point, the Clooneys will have finished their tenancy in the Villa Oleander and that it will be put on the block. But for now, the Clooneys have the scratch to make a move in Provence without selling a thing.
Further proof that Ms. Baysal is a real-estate professional is hardly needed, but if any were needed, we could say that it would be well supplied by her statement to Oggi that, although rumors of a Clooney sale of the estate have circulated for years, this time, the rumors are true.
But, bottom line: The sale of Villa Oleandra is not going to be true until the cash passes hands and the deed changes in the registry of Laglio. That doesn’t seem to be in the cards any time soon.
Finally, there’s another, intramural, subtle Italian engine at work powering the whole “George-and-Amal-Will-Abandon-Italy-Someday” mythology, which what’s at the root of the long years of rumors about the Villa Oleandra’s sale. As many forms of both fictional and non-fictional Italian drama are, it’s tragic and comedic at once, and its meaty narrative lies in the long centuries of competition between Italy and France. Just as the princes of the Veneto and Lombardy competed with the princes of Languedoc and Provence, so in latter-day versions do the regions compete in glamorous expats, as in ‘look-who-invested-with-us.’
George Clooney serves the Italian side of this hilarious contest as the star of stars, the lodestone whose connections to his chosen territory go deep. He met his wife by chance, as she came with a group to dinner in the Villa Oleandra, and he married her in Venice. Not least, Clooney, rightly, leaves every place he lives a better place. He was right there for Como and Laglio when the floods hit a few years back, engaged and then some. His agency for the good makes him even more a crown jewel for the country to have attracted. And the converse is also true: It would be a dreaded blow for Italy and Italians to lose him, especially to the flashier, richer, altogether faster Cote d’Azur.
The periodic, long years of rumors that he, the Great Clooney, would pull up stakes and vanish with a pile of money from Italy forever is, in some inchoate way, an expression of the nightmare. It’s an attempt on Italy’s part to get their arms around the idea of life with out the Great Clooney.
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