The 1920s classical villa that fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld restored along the Elbe River in Germany and named after his longtime partner, Jacques de Bascher, has hit the market for €10 million (US$11.7 million).
The German-born Mr. Lagerfeld, 84, head creative director of both Chanel and Fendi, bought the Roman-style hilltop estate in the Hamburg suburb of Blankenese in 1991,after his partner, Parisian socialite de Bascher, passed away, and in an ode to his lover, named the place "Villa Jako," according to Hamburg-based listing brokerage Engel & Völkers.
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Though he sold the home in 1998, vestiges of his designs still remain.
The grand home sits at the center of a 12,000-square-meter lot overlooking the Elbe River.
Originally built as a single-story mansion for a bachelor shipping underwriter in the 1920s, it features expansive rooms and grand, classical details, including an impluvium, a Roman water pool, in the foyer.
In 1927, a lawyer bought the house and hired its original architect, local luxury home designer Walther Baedeker, to add a second level for bedrooms.
Today, the manicured grounds lead to heavy stone steps up to a front portico lined in columns, which leads into a skylight-lit atrium, according to images of the home. A wide living room features opulent coffered ceilings decorated in gold leaf that dates to when the home was first built.
In contrast to the ornate first floor, the second is more cozy and intimate, with the staircase leading onto a landing that doubles as a book-lined library, off which shoot several bedrooms with bathrooms.
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Mr. Lagerfeld, a fashion heavyweight who also runs an eponymous label, paid 3 million Deutsche marks for the home in 1991, according to the brokerage, and hired art conservator Renate Kant to restore it, filling it with warm, rich brocades to counterbalance its cold stone exterior. The current owner isMichael Haentjes, chief executive of Edel AG, a Hamburg-based media and music distribution company.
He presented the home in a book called "Ein Deutsches Haus" (A German House) and referred to the interiors as "very Weimar Republic," according to a 2008 profile of Mr. Lagerfeld in The New York Times’ T Magazine.
Ultimately, Mr. Lagerfeld sold the home in 1998, reportedly saying its location was too tranquil. "It’s impossible to live on the Elbe. You spend all your time looking out at the river. You ended up becoming lazy," Mr. Lagerfeld said in Engel & Völkers' proprietary magazine, GG, this month.