In Russia, here's what $100 million buys
We don't get a lot of opportunity to write about Russian residences here on Yahoo Homes.
In fact, the only right-side-up example that springs to mind is Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's dacha in Sochi, a now-slumping summer retreat rife with such niceties as a rigged billiard table, a bulletproof sofa and a seawater-filled indoor "swimming" pool shallow enough to ensure that he wouldn't drown.
So our interest was piqued when Curbed commended to readers' attention this $100 million estate in Nikolino, a luxury community "strategically located along the most prestigious direction outside Moscow" (according to the Sotheby's listing).
The seller's timing could probably be better, though: The ruble is in freefall. At one point on Tuesday, the currency had plummeted 20 percent, briefly trading at a new low of about 80 to the U.S. dollar before "stabilizing" near 70. As recently as three weeks ago, a dollar was worth 47 rubles, and a year ago it was worth about 33. In the middle of the night Tuesday, Russia's Central Bank decided to almost double interest rates, to 17 percent from 10.5 percent, to encourage people to hold their rubles instead of exchanging them for dollars. See the video at the bottom of this post for more.
At 25,316 square feet, the house exterior "is distinguished by aristocratism, the interior by palatial splendor," says the listing, whose prose is every bit the worthy complement to the mansion's barocco style. (We were a little disappointed, though, to learn that "barocco" is just a variant of "baroque." We initially took it to be a neologism implying something exceeding baroque, exceeding rococo.) "There is much gilding," it avers; the facade "copies the style of out-of-town mansions of European aristocracy."
As for the surroundings, the mansion sits on 2.4 acres guarded from the clamor of the Rublevo-Uspenskoye highway by a noise-muffling pine forest. "An opportunity has been granted to Nikolino residents to derive daily aesthetic pleasure by the designers of the settlement who designed amazingly beautiful recreation areas with parkways, artificial ponds, pedestrian pathways, summer houses and sculptures," the listing says. "At the same time the artificial landscape" -- including a gas station and a supermarket -- "does not spoil natural splendor, to the contrary it harmoniously blends with the landscape."
Click here or on a photo for a slideshow of this $100 million Moscow estate.
And let us know in the comments: How do you think it compares to stateside luxury homes with price tags well into the nine figures price tags?
Also on Yahoo Homes:
• Most expensive home in America dwarfs other listings at $195 million
• Billionaire heiress hopes to make $65 million on Spelling Manor, pocket-listed at $150 million
• The most expensive home in each of the 50 states
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