Carla Bruni sells family castle for $11.5 million Carla Bruni, the glamorous wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has sold her family's castle in Italy for $11.5 million, fuelling speculation that the French First Lady may never return to her native land. Carla, who had the reputation of a "man eater", seems to have settled down well with the flamboyant President. One year after her marriage to the French leader, it seems Carla saw it as an opportune time to liquidated the major family asset near the city of Turin to an Arab sheikh. "Yes, we have finally found a buyer," said mother Marisa Bruni Tedeschi. "After all, we had finished with Castagneto Po, nobody went there any more," she was quoted as saying by the Italian daily La Stampa. The property, jointly owned by Carla, her mother and her sister, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt over centuries. The 40-room, 1,500-square-metre residence and grounds were bought by billionaire industrialist heir and father Alberto Bruni Tedeschi in 1952. The furniture and fittings of the residence had already sold for $12.8 million at a London auction, the report said. Even as the Carla has charmed people around the world with a well-calibrated Gallic mix of dynamism and demure, she may still have a major public relations problem on her hands in her native Italy. A series of prickly political matters and Carla's preferring French citizenship over Italian has stirred a flurry of criticism in Italy, fuelling speculation that Carla may choose to stay away from her native land. (With inputs from agencies) ... full story »