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The government is putting Canada’s official residence in Rome up for sale, calling it an “exorbitant mansion” that has become too expensive to maintain, with the costs for gardeners alone approaching a quarter-million dollars a year.

But critics are upset about the plan to get rid of the 13,000-square-foot Villa Grandi, the residence of Canada’s ambassador to Italy, arguing it is a monument to troops who fought in the country during the Second World War.

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Canada bought Villa Grandi in 1950 for $186,000, using reparations that Italy was required to pay to the Allies. That association with the thousands of Canadians who died in the Italian campaign has stirred anger among some.

“Indeed, in a very direct sense the house was bought by the toil and blood of the 6,000 Canadian soldiers, airmen and sailors who lost their lives in Italy, the 20,000 who were wounded and, of course, each of the 93,000 who for 20 months … fought bitter battles through Sicily and the Italian peninsula,” former diplomat Robert Fowler wrote in an email circulated this week.