A luxury ski chalet in the Italian Alps – featuring a helipad, indoor pool and outdoor whirlpool bath with a view of the Matterhorn – has gone on sale for €24m (£21m), making it the region’s most expensive listing.
The 13,000 sq ft property has been listed on Savills for the first time after five years of extensive – and costly – renovations that have made it an opulent base for wealthy travellers able to stump up tens of thousands of pounds for the privilege.
The historically listed building, perched 100 metres over the village of Cervinia just south of the Swiss border, retains the original stone exterior that dates back to the 1930s, around the time it gained a reputation for being one of the sites regularly visited by the Italian royal family.
The luxury features of the site, named Chalet La Fenice – Italian for the phoenix – are spread over six floors. They include seven en suite bedrooms – including some with private balconies – a gym, private cinema, wine cellar, as well as a ski room, multiple open fireplaces, and an atrium with a Swarovski chandelier.
Its current owner, John Harrison, is a former partner and chief operating officer of the Swiss hedge fund manager Amplitude Capital. He originally bought the property after seeing the site on a ski trip in 2015, and set to work on renovating the site shortly after.
The renovations were led by an Italian architect who specialises in luxury properties at high altitude. They brought in a dynamite crew by police escort from Turin, to blast into the side of the mountain and create a basement that could host a 10-metre indoor pool with windows overlooking the nearby peaks. That pool is paired with a Turkish bath and treatment rooms for guests.
Harrison told Bloomberg that he had received multiple offers for the property since completing renovations in 2021. However, he has primarily rented it to holiday goers, who are willing to shell out as much as €65,000 for a six-night trip in the area, where skiing is possible for about nine months of the year.
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Those who stay have access to the nearby village of Cervinia, which first gained attention as an old climbing village before growing into one of Italy’s premier ski destinations. However, the chalet’s guests also have an easy trip by cable car to the popular Swiss ski area of Zermatt.
