Yours for £26million, an Italian palazzo built on top of a mini Colosseum "Most of the rooms look onto the garden, and there is also a long terrace that overlooks the Tiber," said Gemma Bruce, of London-based Aylesford International, which is handling the sale. The staterooms are very grand but the rest of the property is very homely and liveable. "The cellars extend right down into the ancient Roman arches," said Ms Bruce. They could by converted into a gym, a health spa or a wine cellar - it would be an amazing place for wine tastings. The daughter of an American diplomat and an Anglo-Irish peer, Dame Iris Origo was born Iris Cutting in 1902 and became a 'marchesa' after marrying an Italian aristocrat, Antonio Origo. They bought an estate near Siena in Tuscany and during the war looked after refugee children and local families displaced by the fighting, as well as escaped POWs and Allied airmen who were trying to make their way through German lines. The diary she kept of her experiences from 1943-1944 was critically acclaimed and described by a New York Times reviewer as "remarkably moving" when it was published in 1984 - four years before she died, aged 85. The palazzo, which she rented and then bought in the 1950s, has an illustrious past. Construction of the Theatre of Marcellus, which could seat 20,000 people, was begun by Julius Caesar but it was completed in 11BC by the emperor Augustus, who named it after his favourite nephew. It was abandoned in the 4th century AD but later turned into a fortress and, later, into a family palazzo, constructed on the massive travertine blocks that make up the Roman theatre, known in Italian as the Teatro di Marcello. It passed into the hands of the Orsini family, after which it is named, in the 18th century.