Work on restoring an abandoned €35m (£27m) mansion in one of the most prestigious areas of Paris has been suspended after the discovery of a corpse that had been decomposing in the basement for 30 years, local media have reported. Minutes from Les Invalides and the French prime minister’s official residence, and backing onto the former home of Yves Saint Laurent, the vast but crumbling complex at 12 rue Oudinot in the heart of Paris had been empty for more than 30 years. Behind a bricked-off facade, Le Monde said, ivy sprouted from the cracked walls and broken shutters of four imposing buildings once lived in by the poet and playwright François Coppée. A once-elegant garden had been untended since the mid-1980s and was now completely overgrown. The stuff of estate agents’ dreams, the hôtel particulier – billed as “the last truly significant property in the capital’s most sought-after neighbourhood” – finally sold in January by its owners, a discreet Dutch company, at an auction that lasted barely 15 minutes. The buyer, Jean-Bernard Lafonta, paid €35.1m – nearly six times the reserve price. Lafonta, a former director of the French investment firm Wendel and now head of his own industrial holding group, lost no time in February starting work on restoring the property, protected by a strict preservation order, to its former glory, residents told Le Parisien.
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