A dilapidated Italian villa which has been abandoned for many years and is now overgrown with long grass and weeds is on the market at 1.2 million euros [$1.6 million] reports the Telegraph.
The villa, near Cefalù [Sicily] once belonged to the British hedonist and writer Aleister Crowley, whose drug-taking experiments and sexual exploits make some of today’s outrageous celebrities seem positively monastic.
The walls of the villa are decorated with erotic frescoes painted by Crowley himself in the 1920s. Crowley called the villa “The Abbey of Thelema” after a philosophy he had invented and his lovers and followers lived as a sort of commune there. Crowley’s way of life offended the Mussolini government and he was expelled from Italy in 1923.
Locally Crowley was known as the “devil of Cefalù” and people will not go near the villa. The estate agents hope that the villa will become a museum of Crowley’s life and work. Crowley died in England in 1947.
Any takers for the villa?
