A family trust for Gernot Langes-Swarovski, great-grandson of the crystal company’s founder, is selling the 72-acre Isola Santa Cristina.
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A private island near Venice, Italy, that was owned by an heir to the Swarovski crystal fortune is set to hit the market for the first time in 40 years with an asking price of €24 million (US$28.3 million), Mansion Global has learned.
Isola Santa Cristina is in the northern part of the Venetian Lagoon, about a 40-minute boat ride from Venice. Drawn to the area’s fishing culture, Gernot Langes-Swarovski, the great-grandson of Swarovski founder Daniel Swarovski, acquired the island in 1986, according to Venice Sotheby’s International Realty, which is marketing the property.
The 72-acre island became a retreat for Gernot Langes-Swarovski, who valued sustainability and nature and maintained it with respect for those concerns.
In fact, the island’s fish farming has been redeveloped in collaboration with Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University, according to Sotheby’s International Realty.
“Gernot Langes-Swarovski’s passion for agriculture, heritage and ecology made his stewardship of Isola Santa Cristina extremely personal, forging relationships with local centres of excellence, such as Ca’ Foscari University, which shared his passion and view,” said Dr Christoph Völk, chair of the trustees of SEGNAL Privatstiftung, the private family trust selling the island.
Today, the island’s landscape still includes much of Langes-Swarovski’s additions: apricot and plum orchards; an olive grove, roughly 7 acres of vineyards producing Merlot, Chardonnay and Cabernet grapes; a vegetable garden; and beehives that produce organic salt marsh honey.
In addition to being involved in the family business, Gernot Langes-Swarovski co-founded business jet operator Tyrolean Jet Services. In 2014, Forbes estimated he had a net worth of $1.3 billion. He died in 2021 at the age of 77.
After his death, ownership of the island was transferred into a family trust, and the property was previously operated by Gernot Langes-Swarovski’s stepson René Deutsch and his wife, Sandra, as a luxury retreat with “a limited number of bookings per year,” according to the island’s website.
The historic villa spans 9,250 square feet across four floors, and includes nine bedrooms, nine bathrooms, two reception rooms, a formal dining room and a chef’s kitchen, plus air conditioning throughout. A crystal chandelier remains in the villa as a nod to Langes-Swarovski’s stewardship of the island.
Outdoor features include a veranda with a large dining space and an open-fire rotisserie and grill; an altana, a traditional Venetian roof terrace; and a heated saltwater pool. A path from the villa leads down to a dock and boat house, and there’s also a mooring for up to five boats.
Across a pond from the main house, there’s a 6,080-square-foot farmhouse with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a yoga studio, as well as a self-contained apartment, also with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen.
The family trust has continued to invest in the island in keeping with Langes-Swarovski’s eco-friendly ideals, according to information provided by the brokerage.
Most recently, they’ve planned the installation of a new €2 million-plus Centro Tecnologico, a facility that will support the island’s technical services, water management and storage of agricultural equipment.
“The time is now right for stewardship of Isola Santa Cristina to pass to a new custodian,” Völk said, “who appreciates the uniqueness of the location and whose passion for ecology and the lagoon will ensure its future.”
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A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.
The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.
“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”
The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.
It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.
In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.
“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.
The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.
“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.
He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.
The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.
“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.
His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.
“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.
When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.
They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.
The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.
For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.
“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”
As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.
“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”
Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.
