Italian princess with SC ties faces eviction this week from her $150M Roman villa

Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi has been served with an eviction notice amid a dispute with her stepsons over the Roman villa she and her husband shared until his death in 2018.

The 500-year-old, 30,000 square-foot villa in the heart of Rome has been put up for auction several times, but no bids were placed.

Once known as Rita Jenrette, then wife of U.S. Rep. John Jenrette of South Carolina’s Pee Dee, said Monday she has appealed the order and is uncertain what she will do if the police show up at her door on Thursday.

She hopes to reach a settlement with her stepsons and gain more time to move.

In his will, her husband Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovis left her 50% of the proceeds if the house were sold and the right to live there for life. His three sons would split the rest.

Villa Aurora, valued at more than $500 million in the first auction, was built in 1570 by Francesco del Nero, a member of a rich Florentine family and a treasurer of pope Clement VII.

Neglected for years, the villa holds antiquities and masterpieces — a statue of the Greek god Pan attributed to Michelangelo, a rare Caraviaggio mural, which represents most of the value of the house..

Galileo, Goethe, Tchaikovsky were visitors to the estate that once covered almost 90 acres. At one time the property held the home of Julius Caesar.

The Ludovisi family has owned the villa since 1621.

Another auction is scheduled for June 30. The asking price is now $158 million.

Also living in the villa is a Ukrainian refugee family — the daughter and grandchildren of Ludovisi’s housekeeper. Amid their fears for their family in Ukraine, they are now worried about the eviction.

“I will never abandon them,” Ludovisi said.

She and her husband spent years restoring the mansion, including replacing the roof that birds flew into the house through, but much remains to be done.

Ludovisi has also digitized the family archive, some of which was found in a locked trunk. T. Corey Brennan, a classics professor at Rutgers University who is helping her, has said they have accumulated some 150,000 pages of material.

They found “revealing” letters from Marie Antoinette in perfect condition, he said.

They have gathered some of the material into a book that will be published in late 2023 by Brepols, which specializes in fine books on the humanities.

The book is dedicated to the prince.

The princess was married to Jenrette for five years while he was an up and coming congressman. He served three terms before losing after he got caught up in what was known as ABSCAM, an FBI sting operation to uncover political corruption.

Thirty-one public officials were targeted for the investigation, in which FBI agents posed as representatives of a fictional Abdul Enterprises, Ltd., owned by an Arab sheik. They were offered money for votes on government contracts benefiting the sheik.

Five congressmen, including Jenrette, were convicted of bribery and corruption.

Jenrette spent 13 months in federal prison. He died in March.

His wife divorced him and moved to Los Angeles, where she made movies and was a reporter for the “A Current Affair” television show.

She then moved to New York where she had a six- and seven-figure income as a real estate broker before meeting the prince In 2003 and moving to Rome.