Angelina Jolie has sold her Los Angeles house for 22 million euros - five million less than the 27 million she originally asked. With that, she closes a chapter that lasted beyond her divorce from Brad Pitt. But the real story isn't the price, it's the address: this is the house where Cecil B. DeMille lived, and next to it once stood Charlie Chaplin's home.

Jolie bought the property in 2017. The house was built in 1913 to a design by architect B. Cooper Corbett, in the Los Feliz neighbourhood. The plot covers 8,093 square metres, and the house has six bedrooms and ten bathrooms. There's also a guest house, a gym, a 12-metre pool, private security and views of the Hollywood Hills and the Griffith Observatory.

DeMille's house

Cecil B. DeMille, director of "The Ten Commandments", "Samson and Delilah" and "The King of Kings", owned the house from 1916. In 1920 he added the neighbouring residence that belonged to Charlie Chaplin to the estate. The DeMille family kept it until 1980 - more than six decades in the hands of one Hollywood clan.

The architecture is French Beaux-Arts: a symmetrical facade, steps, columns, rich ornamentation. Inside, pride of place goes to a gently curving spiral staircase above wooden floors. The materials are noble - teak, solid wood in the dining rooms - and there are fireplaces in the main living room and the bedroom. The library looks like a film set, the dining room is spectacular, the entrance hall is warm, and the kitchen is farmhouse-style. There's even a tea house in the garden.

The porch, the garden and the pool

The porch has a Mediterranean spirit: white Tuscan columns, a wooden pergola, a rattan swing sofa and a wrought-iron lantern. The outdoor dining area sits on compacted gravel, with mid-century-style furniture and lamps of natural woven fibres hanging in the tree canopy. It's an idea that translates to much humbler gardens too: a few woven lanterns in the branches do more than any expensive furniture.

The pool is old-Hollywood style - limestone edging, built-in lighting, 12 metres long, with a sunbathing area of loungers and umbrellas. The greenery has been planted organically, so that a visual path leads from the house to the pool instead of a straight concrete line.

The 1913 house still stands with its spiral staircase and porch columns, more than a century after it was built. How many houses from that era in Macedonia are still standing with their original staircases, rather than under a bulldozer?