A cottage left almost entirely unchanged since Diana, Princess of Wales, stayed there in the months before her death is for sale
The Cape Town property that played host to the royal as she considered a new life in South Africa sits on a sprawling estate that was once home to Earl Spencer, her younger brother.
The guesthouse has gone up for sale as part of Tarrystone Estate, serving as an untouched time capsule of the princess’s final months.
The property is understood to have been listed on the market for approximately £7 million ($13.59m), according to The Telegraph UK .
Located in the sought-after Cape Town suburb of Constantia, the estate spans two acres and includes a thatched-roof mansion, two guest cottages, a tennis court, swimming pool, landscaped gardens and a vineyard.
The cottage where Diana stayed has been preserved, with its original furnishings and styling left virtually unchanged.
A sales brochure describes the residence as being “exactly as she left it”.
The two-bedroom cottage features an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area on the ground floor, as well as a bedroom with a dressing room and ensuite.
Upstairs there is a second bedroom with its own bathroom, kitchenette and deck.
The property is understood to have been listed on the market for approximately £7 million ($13.59m), according to The Telegraph UK .
“We are not just selling a property, it’s a story,” she said.
Spencer sold the estate to a French company in 2012 and its current owner is understood to be a French entrepreneur and collector of African art.
Diana stayed at the property in March 1997 to celebrate the third birthday of Spencer’s son, Louis, during a trip where she also met then-South African president Nelson Mandela.
However, her brother revealed in his memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, that the visit had a lesser-known and more personal reason behind it.
At the time, Diana was secretly seeing heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan and was considering leaving the UK to start a new life with him in South Africa.
“But the prime reason for Diana’s visit had been driven by romance, not family,” Spencer wrote.
“She had come to see for herself if this sublimely beautiful tip of Africa, could provide a haven for her and her heart-surgeon lover. Might they, she dared hope, move there together, and carve out a life?”
Spencer revealed that his sister was hoping Khan could find work at Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital, where the world’s first successful human heart transplant was done three decades earlier.
“Diana dreamed that she and her man could live happily – normally – nearby,” Spencer wrote.
“The other side of the world seemed to offer the possibility of asylum.”
The couple’s relationship ended later that year and Diana went on to start a relationship with Dodi Fayed.
She died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, aged 36, just five months after her visit to Tarrystone.
Spencer was at the Cape Town estate when he received the devastating news of his sister’s death.
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