Xanadu from Darren Ruane Photography on Vimeo.

A five minute fly around the grounds of Hearst Castle, California including the Grand Rooms tour.

Hearst Castle is a National and California Historical Landmark mansion located on the Central Coast of California, United States. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan between 1919 and 1947 for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951.

The California Park Commission voted to approve its inclusion in the California State Park System, and that was approved by the California State Legislature in 1954. However, ironing out the details with the Trustees of the Hearst Estate and the Hearst Corporation took several years. Agreement was finalized in 1957, and it opened in 1958. Since that time it has been maintained within the Hearst San Simeon State Park where the estate, and its considerable collection of art and antiques, is open for public tours. Despite its location far from any urban centre, the site attracts “millions of travellers each year”.

Hearst formally named the estate “La Cuesta Encantada” (“The Enchanted Hill”), but usually called it “the ranch”. Hearst Castle and grounds are also sometimes referred to as “San Simeon” without distinguishing between the Hearst property and the adjacent unincorporated area of the same name.

Invitations to Hearst Castle were highly coveted during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. The Hollywood and political elite often visited, usually flying into the estate’s airfield or taking a private Hearst-owned train car from Los Angeles. Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, James Stewart, Bob Hope, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Dolores Del Rio, and Winston Churchill were among Hearst’s A-list guests. While guests were expected to attend the formal dinners each evening, they were normally left to their own devices during the day while Hearst directed his business affairs. Since “the Ranch” had so many facilities, guests were rarely at a loss for things to do. The estate’s theatre usually screened films from Hearst’s own movie studio, Cosmopolitan Productions.

Hearst Castle was the inspiration for the “Xanadu” mansion of the 1941 Orson Welles film Citizen Kane, a fictionalization of William Randolph Hearst’s career. Hearst Castle was not used as a location for the film, which used Oheka Castle in New York.

Hearst Castle joined the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1972 and became a United States National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976.

William Randolph Hearst went to great lengths to bring back the best of European architecture, most notably ceilings from churches and monasteries, which were pieced back together in California to create his highly eclectic Central Coast getaway.

The music is the O Jays “For the Love of Money” © 1973 Kenneth Gamble / Leon Huff / Anthony Jackson. Out on Philadelphia International Records