Inside Silvio Berlusconi’s £4billion property empire

For those with a penchant for flamboyance and £220 million to spare, it would make a gorgeous – if slightly tacky – home.

Villa Certosa has just about all the vulgar accoutrements needed to satisfy the most demanding superstar, status-conscious Russian billionaire, or even aspiring James Bond villain in search of an unlikely lair.

Welcome, or benvenuti, to what was said to be the favorite of the 14 homes owned by billionaire Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi – who was as famous for his ‘bunga-bunga’ sex parties as he was for being prime minister three times.

His death on Monday at the age of 86 has drawn attention to his extensive portfolio of palazzos, villas, lakeside townhouses, penthouses and apartments spanning the length and breadth of Italy and beyond.

Even the most conservative appraiser estimates the value of Berlusconi’s property empire at £4 billion. And most beloved was the Villa Certosa, a sprawling 26,000-square-foot, 68-room stack on a 170-acre Sardinian estate he purchased in the 1970s.

There he liked to take his most important guests to show off. When Tony and Cherie Blair visited in 2004, he put on a £50,000 fireworks show that culminated in rockets spelling out ‘Viva Tony’ in the Mediterranean sky. (The trip was mostly remembered because Blair was desperate not to be photographed next to Berlusconi, whose floral bandana covered up a new hair transplant.)

Also here, on the island’s fabled Costa Smeralda, was the scene of Berlusconi sunbathing with Vladimir Putin, and where he was photographed surrounded by topless models reportedly flown in on planes from the Italian Air Force.

Guests who preferred discretion could arrive through a secret tunnel dug into a cave, where they could disembark from their boat out of sight of the paparazzi.

A monument of ostentation, apart from its 25 bedrooms, five swimming pools and the 300-seat antique Greek amphitheatre, the villa stuns all visitors with a mock volcano on site, which at the touch of a button emits the sound of eruption and fake lava from its cone.

When the switch was first turned on, the belching of the feigned flames and the roar of artificial vibrations were so realistic that the fire department appeared.

Money was no object. Along with the five swimming pools, there was an artificial lagoon, a large football field, a golf course, tennis courts and a helipad. The grounds were planted with 1,000 cacti, olive and orange groves and 400 varieties of flowers.

In 2009, when the magnate was going through his last stint as Italy’s leader, it was also the scene of a scandal.

Photos published in Spain — he took legal action to prevent them from appearing in Italy — showed not only topless women, but also a naked man frolicking by the pool, later identified as former Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek.

Berlusconi tried to brush it off with his usual rashness. His guests, he explained, were showering and added, “Do you shower in a jacket and tie?”

With so many traits, it was inevitable that they would recur so often in his colorful life story. His first and perhaps most important purchase was the Villa San Martino in Arcore, near Milan, which was his main residence for nearly 50 years.

But if his Sardinian mansion resembled a theme park, the villa where he lived with his first wife Carla was a family home, at least initially.

Bought with the proceeds of his investment in the Italian building boom of the 1960s – he built an entire suburb of Milan from scratch – Berlusconi filled the 18th-century mansion with Renaissance paintings and other treasures.

The artworks were the backdrop for his not-so-family-friendly parties, where a star guest was a 17-year-old Moroccan-born dancer nicknamed “Ruby the Heart Stealer.”

In the basement, he is said to have watched showgirls from his own TV channels offer pole dancing and stripteases dressed as nuns – occasions Berlusconi later described as ‘elegant soirees’.

There was another frenetic party-hosting at the Palazzo Grazioli, a huge mansion in Rome with an impressive collection of art, including frescoes and antiques, and where he loved to fly the Italian tricolor from a first-floor balcony.

Behind the shuttered windows, Berlusconi received a prostitute who later said: ‘I thought I had seen a few things, but I had never seen 20 women for one man.’

She complimented his ‘Guinness Book Of Records’ stamina, claiming that he kept her awake until 8 a.m. while he kept her strength up with a ‘disgustingly sweet’ herbal tea.

Villa Borletti, the headquarters of Berlusconi’s holding company in Milan, was also the site of his clandestine encounters with the actress Veronica Lario, who became his second wife after seeing her perform topless in a theater production.

By then, his property empire was growing. In the 1970s and 1980s, he bought four mansions in Lombardy, including the colossal 147-room Villa San Martino. Then the fabulous Villa Campari in the Italian Lakes, purchased from the eponymous fortified wine family.

He paid £11 million for another waterfront home, Villa Belinzaghi, which overlooks Lake Como and has a marble banquet hall.

Abroad he had houses in Cannes, in France, villas in Antigua, Barbuda and Bermuda. His most humble purchase? A house called The Two Palms on the island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost point.

Strangely enough, he bought the understated property with its whitewashed walls on the same day he promised the locals that he would rid the island of the thousands of refugees who had landed there from Africa.

But while the refugees remain to this day, the future of The Two Palms is as uncertain as the rest of Berlusconi’s real estate holdings.

Will his five children sell them or divide them among themselves? He only set one condition: Villa San Martino – scene of the bunga-bunga parties – must remain in family ownership. With such a history, it may turn out to be a curse rather than a blessing.