“I think they’d celebrate if I was dead,” she told the Telegraph.
“They are full of more hatred than I have ever seen in my life. They are just waiting for me to die.
“I feel betrayed, I feel harassed, abused. I’m awfully tired. Psychologically, this really is an abrupt and harsh and terrible end to what has been a labour of love. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through.”
Inheritance dispute
The 16th-century villa has been at the heart of an inheritance dispute since the prince died in 2018.
With the princess and her stepsons unable to agree on sharing the property, an Italian court ordered that it be put up for sale.
It went up for auction last year for €471 million ($839m), qualifying it as the world’s most expensive private home.
But it failed to sell and the price was lowered during several successive auctions. At the last one, the asking price had dropped to €140 million ($249m).
The next auction, at which the price is likely to drop to about €100 million ($178m), is expected to be held in June.
In January, a judge in Rome instructed police to evict the American-born princess, saying she had failed to maintain the historic property and keep it in a “good state of conservation”.
“The Carabinieri were very polite, but they said, ‘You have 30 minutes to pack up and leave’. I wasn’t ready to go. I still had lots to pack, including clothes. They brought carpenters who changed the locks,” the princess said.
She was on her way from Rome to the countryside north of the city, where she was going to stay for a few days with a friend, Princess Pia Ruspoli, a member of another of the great aristocratic families of Rome.
“I’m going to take some time to recuperate. I don’t know how long I will stay. Everything is fluid,” Princess Rita said.
From there, she said she might move to Paris to stay with other friends.
Princess Rita insisted that in her husband’s will, she was awarded the right to live in the villa for the rest of her life.
“It’s in the will. How can the court contravene a law?” she said. “I have given it all the love and care it needed for the last 20 years.”
Ongoing dispute with stepsons
But, as a testimony to how relations have broken down with her stepsons, one of them accused her of “telling a pack of lies” and claimed she had organised group tours of the property without authorisation.
Visitors had paid €35 a head, said Prince Bante Boncompagni Ludovisi, claiming the princess pocketed the proceeds.
“There was no insurance covering the contents of the villa. One of the visitors could have broken a statue or knocked something over. She has not let us enter the property for years. I barely know her.”
In a series of angry outbursts on Twitter, he called his father “a psychotic”, a “monster” and an alcoholic, claiming his grandfather had intended that Villa Aurora should be inherited by him and his brothers.
Villa Aurora, which was built in 1570 in the historic heart of Rome, is best-known for its Caravaggio ceiling painting, which was painted by the artist in 1597 and depicts the gods Pluto, Jupiter and Neptune gathered around a celestial orb decorated with zodiac signs.
At the time it was painted, the small room was being used as an alchemy workshop. It also boasts a priapic statue of the Greek god Pan in the garden, which has been attributed to Michelangelo.
Born Rita Carter in San Antonio, Texas, the princess worked as an actress in her youth, appearing in films such as Zombie Island Massacre and the television show Fantasy Island, where her character was called Nurse Heavenly.
She was previously married to a Republican politician from South Carolina, and during a career as an estate agent, she sold an office block in New York City to Donald Trump.
A pantheon of illustrious characters have passed through the villa over the centuries, including Tchaikovsky, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and Woody Allen, after he finished his 2012 film, To Rome to Love.
