Early Life
Alfonso grew up with private tutors in Bohemia and Spain, learning fluent German, Spanish, French and English.
After World War II, the prince started to buy land in Marbella in 1947. He sold plots to various rich and powerful friends including the likes of the Rothschild and Thyssen families. In 1954 he created the Marbella Club, the Costa del Sol's first luxury hotel, attracting many celebrities of the time to the former fishing village.
The family fortune was replenished by Alfonso's marriage in 1955 to the 15-year-old Austrian-Italian Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, a Fiat heiress. The bride's youth evoked some scandal in high society, but the couple had obtained a papal dispensation for the marriage and 400 guests attended a 16-day wedding party. Five years later the marriage was dissolved by divorce in Mexico City after Ira left him to marry another notorious 1950s playboy, Francisco "Baby" Pignatari, another dispensation being obtained, this time for an annulment, from the Church in 1969.
Read more about this topic: Prince Alfonso Of Hohenlohe-Langenburg
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