Townhouse owned by Mike Nichols lists for $26 million

A historic Upper East Side double-wide townhouse once owned by the late screen and stage director Mike Nichols is now on the market for $26 million.

The property is on the same block as Madonna’s mega mansion.

Built in 1899, the 40-foot-wide townhouse at 160 E. 81st St. comes with a private garage. There’s also a large landscaped garden “with space for a soccer match,” according to the listing.

Inside, the home comes with eight bedrooms, five fireplaces — four gas, one woodburning — a mezzanine balcony and details like an English pine-paneled library, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a fireplace.

There’s also a chef’s kitchen facing the garden, and a grand garden-facing living room with 20-foot ceilings, along with a formal dining room, and a massive main bedroom suite on the third floor.

Nichols directed films that became deeply engrained in popular culture from “The Graduate” to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Working Girl” — nailing specific moments in time with exquisite detail, compassion and humor. A new biography, however, focuses on allegedly unsavory aspects of his life and career.

He was married to ABC news legend Diane Sawyer, who got her start as an aide to then-president Richard Nixon.

Nichols sold the townhouse for $1.68 million in 1995.

The listing brokers are Patricia Farman-Farmaian, Alexa Lambert and Marc Achilles, of Compass.