Hearst Castle
750 Hearst Castle Rd
San Simeon, CA
A newspaper baron's dream house on a hill above the Pacific, built over almost thirty years with one of America's first great women architects.
Hearst Castle is what happens when one of the richest and most powerful men in America decides to build a house without a budget or an ending. The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst inherited this ranch land above San Simeon and, starting in 1919, spent nearly three decades turning the hilltop into an estate of palaces, pools, gardens, and imported antiquity, all with the architect Julia Morgan at his side.
The result is excessive, dazzling, and unlike anywhere else in California: whole ceilings and choir stalls bought from European churches, a pool ringed by an ancient temple front, and terraces looking out over miles of coast. It is a monument both to a golden age of newspapers and to Morgan, one of the first great women architects in the country, who quietly made it all stand up.
What Guests Love
- Touring the opulent rooms of Casa Grande, packed with European art, tapestries, and ceilings Hearst bought whole and shipped across the ocean
- The Neptune Pool, an outdoor pool framed by a real Roman temple facade, with the Pacific stretching out beyond
- The story of Julia Morgan, who designed it all over nearly three decades
- The drive up the hill and the sweeping view back down the coast
Worth Knowing
- You reach the estate only by guided tour with a shuttle bus up the hill, so plan around the tour rather than dropping in
- There are several different tours covering different parts of the house and grounds; the grand rooms tour is the classic first visit
- The hilltop can be hot and exposed in summer and foggy in the mornings, so dress in layers and bring water
- Photography of the interiors is allowed but the rooms are dim; the pools and gardens are the show-stoppers
Details
San Simeon, CA
Learn about Hearst Castle
Hearst and Julia Morgan
Hearst grew up camping on this land, and when he inherited it he first told Morgan he wanted a bungalow. That ambition grew into a full estate. Morgan, the first woman to earn an architecture degree from the celebrated Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the first licensed woman architect in California, ran the project for nearly thirty years.
The two reworked the buildings endlessly as Hearst's collecting and whims changed, tearing out and rebuilding rooms to fit new acquisitions. Work continued into the 1940s, and the estate was never truly finished when Hearst's health forced him to leave in 1947.
The house and its treasures
The main house, Casa Grande, rises behind twin bell towers and holds a refectory hung with Renaissance banners, a billiard room, a private theater, and rooms filled with tapestries, sculpture, and painted ceilings gathered from across Europe. Three guest houses, grand in their own right, flank the plaza.
Hearst bought art and architecture by the shipload, sometimes whole rooms at a time, and much of what fills the estate is genuinely old, reassembled here far from where it was made. In its heyday the house hosted a steady stream of Hollywood stars and world figures.
The pools and gardens
The Neptune Pool is the estate's signature: an outdoor pool set against the reconstructed facade of an ancient Roman temple, with colonnades and statuary and the ocean beyond. Indoors, the Roman Pool glitters with blue and gold tile and glass mosaics.
Between the buildings, terraced gardens step down the hill with statuary, fountains, and Mediterranean plantings that stay green through the dry season. The whole hilltop was engineered to bloom in a place that is naturally golden and brown by summer.
The coast below
The estate looks out over the Hearst family's historic ranch land, much of which remains open coastal range, and down to the little cove of San Simeon where materials once came in by ship. A few miles north, hundreds of northern elephant seals haul out on the beach in a raucous, easily watched colony.
This is the doorstep of the Big Sur coast, and Highway 1 climbs north from here into some of the most dramatic shoreline in the country. Cambria and its pine-shaded village lie a short drive south.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near San Simeon
Elephant Seal Vista Point
About 5 miles north
A boardwalk above a beach where thousands of northern elephant seals molt, breed, and spar, one of the most accessible seal colonies on the coast.
Cambria
About 8 miles south
A pine-covered coastal village of galleries and inns, with Moonstone Beach and the folk-art house known as Nitt Witt Ridge nearby.
Ragged Point
About 14 miles north
The scenic gateway to Big Sur, a clifftop pull-off with a long view up the coast where Highway 1 begins its dramatic climb.