The rich are different from you and me. They have bigger homes, for a start – like the Château Louis XIV, which has just fetched €275m (£200m) in what is thought to be the world’s most expensive house sale.
Inspired by the Roi Soleil’s 17th-century home, the nearby Palace of Versailles, and partly built using techniques from the period, the villa boasts 10 bedroom suites, a library, a cinema, a sturgeon-filled aquarium, a wine cellar for 3,000 bottles, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a squash court, two ballrooms and a nightclub. Decorating it called for 15,000 sheets of gold. As well as Versailles, it borrows from the baroque chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, originally home to Louis’s superintendent of finances.
According to the developer, Cogemad, the 23-hectare garden evokes the genius of royal gardener André Le Nôtre with its elegant parterres, gold-leafed fountain, marble statues and hedged labyrinth.
That’s right, a labyrinth containing almost 2km of paths. It’s literally a-maze-ing, so over the top that, when Kim Kardashian was preparing to marry Kanye West, the Château Louis XIV was on the shortlist of venues. It’s a mystery that it’s taken three years to sell this newbuild. The buyer is said to come from the Middle East, but his identity remains unknown.
Versailles clearly has an appeal for the filthy rich. In Hillsboro Beach, Florida, $159m (£106m) will buy you Le Palais Royal, which for all its ugliness and vulgarity also takes cues from Louis’s palace. This “intracoastal mansion” features six waterfalls and a marble staircase that cost $2m.
What if you could build yourself a home based on any masterpiece of world architecture? What would you choose, and why? The Taj Mahal, for its romance? The White House, for its power? The Eiffel Tower, for its elegance? Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, for its higgledy-piggledy craziness?
