Insane Mansions You're Going To Want For Yourself
Who hasn't fantasized about a weekend whiled away in a mega-mansion, à la '90s classic Blank Check, succumbing to every insane impulse with no concern for the bill? It's just a common daydream for most of us, but the mega-rich get to live this large 24/7. And some of these mansions they play in are insane. Insanely fun, sure, but insane nonetheless. Like, how many rooms are too many rooms, how many pools are too many pools, and how many miles of hallway are too many miles? Let's find out!
Le Palais Royal has its own IMAX theater
If you're looking to ensconce yourself in a Black Mirror-esque dystopian fever dream of near-constant pleasure, you could do a whole lot worse than the $150 million Le Palais Royal in Hillsboro Beach, FL. With its own Star Wars-themed go-kart track, ice-skating rink, bowling alley, nightclub, casino, and personal IMAX theater (the world's first—take that, Dubai!), an absurdly good time is always just seconds away, provided you have friends.
If you're more of a Patrick Bateman than a Richie Rich, Le Palais Royal has you covered as well, with insane details such as insulated South African marble floors specifically designed to mute the sound of high heels, a $2 million marble staircase in the foyer, and a 1,300-gallon live coral-filled saltwater aquarium wall with an embedded TV (in case you somehow don't want to watch Sportcenter or Kevin Can Wait in IMAX).
The Bradbury Estate has an underground shooting range
The $78 million Bradbury Estate mega-mansion in Bradbury, CA, packs a lot of crazy into its 32,000 square feet, including a subterranean firing range, temperature-controlled trout pond with two-story waterfall, and cross-shaped infinity pool. It's the perfect headquarters for an outdoorsy, born-again supervillain.
That's not to say it isn't a total Real World-style party house, because oh boy it sure is: there's a 15-person jacuzzi, guesthouse, poker lounge, 3-D theater, and 2,000 bottle wine cellar, which is a great place to unwind before riding your oak-paneled elevator down to the firing range. It's the perfect environment for a real-life game of Clue, basically, right down to the six fireplaces that probably spin around when you try to take a book off a shelf in the two-story library.
Updown Court has a heated marble driveway
No, Updown Court isn't the name of a Funny or Die Downton Abbey spoof: it's one of England's most expensive private residences, selling in 2011 for about $43 million (although it was formerly listed for a ludicrous $143 million). What does $43 million get you? As former owner Leslie Allen-Vercoe put it, "If Elton John were a house, he'd be Updown Court." (So, tasteful and understated, right?)
Unfortunately, the mega-mansion version of the Saturday Night Fighter doesn't have a hulking pair of garish sunglasses riveted into its facade, but it does have a $3.7 million heated marble driveway, which is perfect for when your Bugatti's tires get too cold (you have to baby them, y'know?). Other totally reasonable amenities include two indoor swimming pools (for when it's too cold to swim in any of the three outdoor pools), a glassed-in squash court, two escape tunnels, a panic room, and a balcony modeled after a balcony in a house Gianni Versace used to own.
King Richard's Indiana castle has a jester-themed dining room
When cigar tycoon Richard Deer, founder of King Richard Cigars, moved to Miami in 2012 and put his $5.5 million Indiana mega-mansion on the market, his real estate agents unleashed a photo gallery on the world that answered a heretofore unpondered query: "What if Liberace was a Star Wars-loving Renn Faire enthusiast?"
The answer to that question is all over the obscenely garish 23,000-square-foot property, which features a jester-themed dining room, Star Wars-themed basement game room/bar, and (fake?) medieval weaponry mounted in perhaps the only private bathroom in North American ever to feature two black-and-gold urinals. It doesn't end there, of course: King Richard's sex palace also features a walk-in humidor, Caligula-aping whirlpool bath (in the bedroom, natch), and a second basement bar best described by the Daily Mail as an "80s speakeasy."
Floyd Mayweather's "Big Boy Mansion" has its own Instagram account
Sorry guys, but boxer Floyd Mayweather's 22,000 square-foot Las Vegas "Big Boy Mansion" probably has more Instagram followers than you, with 187k at the time of this writing. Why give a mansion its own social media account? "This mansion speaks because it was paid in cash," Mayweather claims in Big Boy's bio, sounding like the world's most useless fortune cookie.
But the account truly is a gift to the world, providing an inside look at what life is like for a man with so much money, he sometimes takes naps with it. There's a double-decker, two-story movie theater, which is shown playing the exact same thing on both giant screens, presumably so Mayweather can still watch the Lakers when he's flying around on his personal hoverjet. Big Boy also offers a 12-person shower, Fendi light fixtures, and a garage with $15 million worth of supercars Mayweather (or is it Big Boy?) affectionately calls "Toys R Us."
Villa Leopolda requires 50 gardeners
Just like a Dyson vacuum or George Foreman grill, the $500 million Villa Leopolda is named after the man who built it: King Leopold II of Belgium. Nestled as only villas can be, between Nice and Monaco on the French Riviera, Villa Leopolda reportedly requires 50 gardeners to maintain the hundreds of lemon, cypress, and olive trees on the property, but that's still only one gardener per acre.
If the gardeners ever wanted to stage an uprising and take over the villa—which we in no way endorse, by the way—there would only be enough bedrooms for 11 of them, unless they're cool with a bed-sharing situation. (They could make it work, is all we're saying.) But there's always the guest house: one of Villa Leopolda's many outbuildings doubles as a guest mansion "larger than the mansions of most millionaires," according to Mark David of Variety, who takes a wry guess at what all the other outbuildings are for: "probably for storing all the rakes and lawnmowers."
Wentworth Woodhouse has five miles of hallway
If you're looking for an excellent backdrop for all your Jane Austen cosplay, there's no better place on the planet than Wentworth Woodhouse, the inspiration for Pemberley in Pride & Prejudice. The Wood, as no one calls it, sold for $11 million back in 2014, which is an absolute steal, even considering it needed more than $40 million in repairs. It's twice the size of Buckingham Palace, with an absurd five miles of hallway for stripping to your socks and sliding around, Risky Business-style.
It took the First Marquess of Rockingham so long to build the place, the eastern and western wings are actually different architectural styles—Baroque and Palladian, respectively—which means Rockingham had something like the opposite of OCD. You could literally sleep in a different room in this place each night for a year, and yes, we know what literally means: there are, in fact, 365 separate rooms you could crash in at Wentworth Woodhouse.
The Long Island "Gatsby" Mansion has 35 bathrooms
It takes a lot of chutzpah to pay $15 million for a mansion in 2013 and then turn around and try to sell it two years later for $100 million. However, that's precisely what happened with this Gatsby-esque Long Island behemoth, built just three years after The Great Gatsby was published, and located in the exact place where the totally made-up Gatsby "lived." Appraisers call this a "vanity listing" meant only to increase buzz and get trendy sites like Grunge to hype it. (Nice work!)
So what do you get for a tenth-of-a-billion dollars? A total of 60,000 square-feet of living space, if you combine the main mansion with its two satellite mini-mansions. There are an insane 35 bathrooms on the property, which is weird considering there are only 13 total bedrooms. The place might best be used as a super-swanky water park, considering all the potty break opportunities, the "several" indoor pools, and the property's artificial "lazy river," which, yeah, is totally a water park feature. There's also a bowling alley, casino, shooting range, and wine vault, making this an excellent candidate for Six Flags Over Long Island.
Hacienda de la Paz is two-thirds underground
A $50 million mega-mansion featuring a subterranean marble ballroom that doubles as a tennis court may sound like the lair of a sporty Bond villain, but it's actually owned by "shrimp importer" John Z. Blazevich, who just sounds like a Bond villain. Of its 51,000 square-feet, Hacienda de la Paz in Los Angeles hides a whopping 31,000 feet underground, but not because Blazevich is hiding a secret stash of uranium or perpetual motion machine. Zoning restrictions prohibiting two-story homes in the area forced him to tunnel into the earth, like a shrimp-pimping multi-millionaire mole.
What's he got down there? The nine bedrooms are all above-ground, but the 15,000-square-foot ballroom/tennis court and a 10,000-square-foot spa are all subterranean. Elsewhere, the property features two tennis courts, two pools, 20+ bathrooms, and four full-sized kitchens. There's also, if you're so-inclined, an olive-pressing facility on the property, meaning you can make your own fresh-squeezed EVOO. Considering the price of olive oil, buying this mansion simply for that might actually save you money.
Hala Ranch has its own water treatment plant, gas pumps
The 95-acre Hala Ranch estate north of Aspen, CO, is perhaps the only private residence in the world with its own wastewater treatment plant, gas station, and car wash, which sounds like the kind of misguided isolationist fantasy a 10-year-old would dream up in a session of Sim City 2000 before getting bored and destroying it all with aliens.
Purchased in 2012 from a Saudi Prince for $49 million by hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson, the estate is bigger than the White House at a thoroughly unnecessary 56,000 square-feet (the White House is just under 55,000 square-feet), with 15 bedrooms, 16 gold-festooned bathrooms, a private beauty salon, and a private barber shop. If you get bored pretending you're the only living boy in Aspen, you can head out on the property's private cross-country ski trails, where you may catch a glimpse of someone other than one of your twelve full-time servants who doesn't know what it's like to own a racquetball court.