Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie

It’s hard to imagine anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know the story of what the press quite painfully, if pragmatically, call ‘Brangelina’, but in case you are that rock-dwelling person, here’s a quick summary. Brad Pitt, movie star, met Angelina Jolie, movie star, on the set of the quite silly and not at all critically acclaimed movie ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ in 2005. The movie was about two married assassins who didn’t know the other was an assassin, and while the plot was utterly daft and unbelievable, the sexual chemistry between the couple was most believable indeed.

The fly in the ointment? Only everyone’s favourite ‘girl next door’, Jennifer Aniston, star of sitcom Friends and Brad Pitt’s wife of five years. That marriage ended very (very) soon after, and although Angelina maintains there was no impropriety, fans of Jennifer Aniston still have very firm views on the topic even a decade on.

The rumours about Jolie and Pitt circulated wildly for a short time, before they were photographed together on holiday in Kenya with Angelina’s new adopted child from Cambodia. At which point the rumour mills went permanently crazy for the couple and the press started calling them ‘Brangelina’, for which the only possible excuse is saving valuable print space.

I’ve never had any desire to work for Hello! so I’m going to stop with the celebrity gossip there and move onto the couple’s history on the Riviera.

In 2008, the couple began renting the glorious Chateau Miraval Estate near Brignol in Provence, with the intention to buy and eventually turn it into their principal home. The actors’ twins, Knox and Vivienne, were born in Fondation Lenval hospital in Nice in the summer of that year.

The house, reportedly bought for $60 million, has 35 bedrooms, billiard rooms, banquet hall, indoor pool and gym, sauna and a Jacuzzi- as well as furniture designed by Brad Pitt himself. The grounds are simply spectacular, with terraces of olive groves, aqueducts, fountains and streams running all through the wooded property and filling the moat and lake. The famous vineyard is considered one of France’s 500 best; the couple are continuing this viticulture tradition and the vineyard is turning out an excellent rose wine called Côtes de Provence Rosé Miraval, which has won numerous awards. Apparently (by his own account) Brad Pitt, superstar, has turned into quite the farmer and wine geek.

The house has a long history, with a building on the grounds since pre-Roman times, and was owned in the 1970’s by jazz pianist and composer Jacques Loussier, who built a recording studio there. Pink Floyd recorded part of The Wall album here, and Sting, the Cranberries and Sade also recorded in the studio.

And history this house continues to make: On August 23, 2014, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt wed in the French-gothic chapel at Château Miraval in a small private wedding. The couple later split in February 2017.

One can only imagine the price this wonderful property would fetch now if it came back onto market. It even has a moat.