Hearst Castle
Interesting facts
- Orson Welles modelled Xanadu, the vast castle in Citizen Kane (1941), on San Simeon, and Hearst used his newspapers to try to bury the film.
- Citizen Kane was finally shown in the castle's own private cinema in March 2012, more than seventy years after Hearst fought its release.
- The estate counts 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms and 19 sitting rooms, and in Hearst's lifetime it held what was called the largest private zoo in the world.
- Morgan and Hearst exchanged around 3,700 letters and telegrams about the project, now kept in an archive at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
- For more than twenty years of near-constant work on the hill, Julia Morgan's fees came to only about $70,755.
- The twin towers of Casa Grande were modelled on the church of Santa María la Mayor in Ronda, which Hearst had admired in southern Spain.
- A hidden door beside the great fireplace of the Assembly Room let Hearst step out of a private lift from his Gothic suite and surprise his guests.
- The carved gable under the eaves of Casa Grande is made of Siamese teak that Morgan found in San Francisco, originally meant for fitting out a ship.
- The dining hall is lined with choir stalls from the cathedral of La Seu d'Urgell in Catalonia and hung with Palio banners from Siena.
- Guests ate pheasant and venison at a medieval-style table, yet were handed paper napkins and bottles of ketchup unless Hearst's wife was in residence.
Why it is worth it
Hearst Castle crowns a hill above the Pacific near San Simeon, on the empty stretch of California coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco. William Randolph Hearst called it La Cuesta Encantada, the Enchanted Hill, and from 1919 until 1947 he and the architect Julia Morgan built it almost without pause, reworking rooms, terraces and pools again and again. The result is a fantasy of Spanish and Italian Mediterranean architecture set in terraced gardens: the twin bell towers of Casa Grande rising over guest houses, statuary and cypress, with the ocean far below.
Morgan, who in 1904 had become the first woman licensed as an architect in California, designed every part of it, from the reinforced concrete structure to the tiles, but much of the interior was assembled from Europe. Hearst bought antiquities and fragments on an enormous scale, and more than thirty Spanish ceilings, choir stalls, tapestries and an important collection of ancient Greek vases were fitted into Casa Grande, a main house of about 115 rooms. The effect is theatrical and sometimes overwhelming, a collector's dream of the Old World built for the parties of the Hollywood age.
The two pools are the most memorable images. The outdoor Neptune Pool, rebuilt three times before Hearst was satisfied, holds around 345,000 gallons of water framed by marble colonnades and the facade of an ancient Roman temple that Hearst bought and had largely reconstructed on the terrace looking out to the hills. Indoors, the Roman Pool, finished in 1935, glows in deep blue and gold Murano glass mosaic under a dim ceiling, one of the most beautiful swimming rooms ever made. Hearst once kept a private zoo on the estate, and zebras descended from it can still sometimes be seen grazing on the ranch land along the highway. The family gave the castle to the State of California in 1958, and it is now a state historical monument.
Getting there
Hearst Castle is on Highway 1 at San Simeon, about 44 km from Paso Robles and some 400 km from both Los Angeles and San Francisco. The nearest airport is San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport (SBP), about 69 km away. Visitors park at the visitor center at the foot of the hill and ride a shuttle bus up to the estate.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Hearst Castle, known formally as La Cuesta Encantada, is a historic estate in San Simeon, located on the Central Coast of California. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his architect Julia Morgan, the castle was built between 1919 and 1947. Today, Hearst Castle is a museum open to the public as a California State Park and registered as a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark.
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