The abandoned villa in Italy where Edward VII’s mistress, Alice Keppel, liked to sunbathe – and where her great-granddaughter, Queen Camilla, spent her childhood holidays playing hide and seek…

It is Queen Camilla’s dream home: a sprawling palace on a sun-drenched hill in Tuscany with breathtaking views over the city of Florence.

Camilla spent her childhood holidays here with her brother Mark and sister Annabel, playing hide and seek in the enormous frescoed rooms and roaming freely in the spacious grounds dotted with ancient statues.

The Villa dell’Ombrellino, once occupied by the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei in the 16th century, was built in 1372.

It was bought with cash a hundred years ago. King Edward VII gave his mistress Alice Keppel – Camilla’s great-grandmother – and during Alice’s lifetime the site became a magnet for passing European monarchs.

A portrait of Alice Keppel, wife of George Keppel. Alice was Camilla’s great-grandmother

Edward VII, centre, is pictured staying at Rufford House near Doncaster as a guest of Lady Savile in 1906. The King’s mistress, Alice Keppel, is fourth from left

The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei once lived in the house, which overlooks Florence

Three-hour lunches on the terrace were served by waves of servers, champagne corks popped and there was nothing but gossip about titled people.

“Ombrellino served Mrs. Keppel’s status fantasies,” a friend recalled – and indeed her life in this Italian paradise was nothing less than a royal court in exile.

Now the enormous building lies empty and abandoned, its gates rusting and the paint peeling – a white elephant of a palace that no one wants. No one has lived there for twenty years and no one wants to live there.

It’s on the market – and yours for just £23 million.

To this day, Camilla regrets the fact that her mother Rosalind Shand made the decision to sell it in 1972 – and during a visit to Florence a few years ago she told the Daily Mail’s Rebecca English: ‘It is so’ a tragedy. I think I should start a campaign to buy it back.”

This caused a wave of gossip in the old Italian city that Camilla was leaning on her husband Charles to add Ombrellino to his bulging real estate portfolio.

But it looks like Charles hasn’t coughed up. And from that day until now the place has remained desolate and desolate.

“No one wants to buy Villa dell’Ombrellino,” said a neighbor this week on the Bellosguardo hill where the property is located. ‘The building is a commercial disaster. Nobody wants to live there.

‘Downstairs are large rooms with high ceilings, while upstairs there are smaller rooms, but fewer – two sitting rooms for each bedroom – and the whole thing is very impractical.’

The neighbor continued: ‘The gardens were designed by the famous Cecil Pinsent and contain a collection of trees from all over the world.

‘There were azaleas in huge terracotta pots – but the trees have disappeared and vandals have destroyed the vases of azaleas.

‘When Mrs Shand sold the property, the building was rented to the famous Gran Caffè Doney, where the rich and famous gathered in Florence, but it never moved there.

‘Eventually the building was taken over by Deutsche Bank and the rooms were sublet as office space to various companies, including Brooks Brothers.

‘They organized a number of conferences, events and receptions there, but eventually they closed the building and it stood empty for more than twenty years.’

Camilla lamented the loss during a visit to Florence a few years ago: ‘It’s such a tragedy. I think I should start a campaign to buy it back’

Views of the beautiful Tuscan landscape

After Alice Keppel’s death in 1947, the house was inherited by her second daughter Violet Trefusis, whose lesbian elopement with the writer Vita Sackville-West shocked London society in the 1920s and forced Mrs. Keppel – already into trouble with the royal court because the current king, George V, disapproved of her leaving Britain.

Nevertheless, Alice had a permanent suite at the Ritz hotel in London, with many adjoining staff quarters, and moved there permanently during the war.

It is said locally that Ombrellino was used for the torture of prisoners by the Germans after the surrender of Italy in September 1943 and before August 1944, when Florence was liberated.

Violet Trefusis, second daughter of Alice Keppel, was famous as a writer and as a lover of author and garden designer Vita Sackville-West

If so, Mrs. Keppel never knew it.

She returned to Ombrellino in 1946 and died there a year later of cirrhosis.

Her long-suffering husband George, who had endured his wife’s many money-consuming infidelities – not to mention her long affair with the king – was so heartbroken that he died there two months later.

So the house has a history. And now it’s all yours, for just £23 million.