MONTREAL - For a mere $1,995,000, you too can live like a reputed kingpin of the international underworld.
The lavish, custom-built stone home of Vito Rizzuto, who was once described as the Godfather of Canada's Mafia and was considered among the world's most powerful criminals, is up for sale.
It has a lot to offer _ four bedrooms, five bathrooms, double Thermador ovens and a Maytag dishwasher.
The mantel of the wood-burning fireplace is imported straight from Italy, as are fixtures and tiles for a "well-appointed bathroom'' on the second storey. The listing describes "elegant granite floors gracing the large entrance.''
"This home is perfect for both raising a family and entertaining,'' adds the listing by Sotheby's agent Liza Kaufman.
It's a more normal _ and peaceful _ departure for a resident than the street has known in recent headlines. Others have been made in handcuffs, via a sniper's bullet or into the shroud of mysterious disappearance.
Rizzuto is currently living in a U.S. prison, where he's serving a 10-year sentence for racketeering.
Kaufman said in an interview that there's been interest in the house. She acknowledged that, on Friday, a lot of that interest actually came from reporters who called her once the identity of the former occupant became known.
Rizzuto isn't actually her client. That's his wife and the home's registered owner, Giovanna Cammalleri.
To Kaufman, whose listings include many high-end homes in the city, it's just another real-estate deal.
"It has nothing to do with whoever's lived there before,'' Kaufman said. "The owner of the house right now is a lady who (has) nothing to do with the past, directly.
"Nothing untowards that we know of happened there. It's just a beautiful family residence that is going to sell well because it's well built and it delivers what a family needs.''
Mob homes have often titillated average people for their air of illicit adventure, be it the Corleone compound in the "Godfather'' movies, Tony Soprano's New Jersey digs or Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone's headquarters in Chicago's Lexington Hotel.
Kaufman, who is an agent for Sotheby's International Realty, described the house as "a nice place'' that doesn't stand out in an area laden with luxury homes.
She said there was no reluctance to take on the house because of its storied former occupant.
"Why would there be? There's so many homes that we've sold throughout the years that have more notoriety than this one.
"I'm not selling the history of it. I'm just selling the house.''
Montreal's city maps give the street name where Rizzuto lived as Antoine-Berthelet _ but it's been widely known by its nickname, "Mafia Row,'' because of the clutch of mansions built there by the Rizzuto clan in the 1980s.
Besides Vito Rizzuto, family patriarch Nicolo Rizzuto lived on the street as did Vito's brother-in-law Paolo Renda.
But in recent years, Mafia Row has been slowly emptying out in a downsizing that had nothing to do with living accommodations.
The Rizzutos have seen their power base whittled away as rivals moved in on their territory.
Renda vanished without a trace in May 2010.
Nicolo Rizzuto was felled by a sniper as he stood in his home's kitchen with family last fall. Police say the gunman lined up his shot from among trees in a forest backing the properties.
However, anybody perusing the real-estate listing will likely see that forest for its natural beauty and as a major buying point, rather than any links to Montreal crime lore.
It is, as the listing says, "immense and magnificent.''
