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The main sink area in the bathroom was a circular dome with beautiful floor tiles and painted details on the wall. The entire place is covered in intricate details, like the tiled designs you’ll see in many places. The house has intricately painted rooms and (at the time) hidden passages to get from room to room. There were Picasso’s on the wall and Versace upholstery on the furniture.
EXPLORE GIANNI'S RESTAURANT
You can actually go inside the Versace mansion. But it’s going to cost you. - Miami Herald
You can actually go inside the Versace mansion. But it’s going to cost you..
Posted: Wed, 19 Feb 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]
A flock of celebrities have stayed at the Versace Mansion at some point. Elton John, Princess Diana and other close friends of Versace stayed there often. Madonna supposedly stayed in the tower suite for a month (you can glimpse the tower in the picture above) and Drake supposedly wrote songs in the observatory.
They include this mosaic of Versace's signature Medusa head.
He spent an astonishing $32 million on renovations that included demolishing the Revere to make way for a pool, garden, and new south wing of the home. But Gianni Versace didn’t let that intimidate him, and bought the house in 1992, spending more than $32 million to turn the rundown apartment building into the opulent mansion that would serve as his home from 1992 until his death in 1997. After his death, the house was bought by an owner in 2000 for $19 million who turned it into a members-only club.
About the Villa
Alden Freeman died at Casa Casuarina on December 29, 1937 following a prolonged illness. The house was then sold to Jacque Amsterdam for $100k, who continued to run the house as an apartment complex that he named the “Amsterdam Palace. Rooms were rented for $600/month during winter season and $30/month in the summer. Alden Freeman’s father, Joel Freeman was Treasurer of The Standard Oil Trust (also known as Rockefeller’s Company) and left Alden a fabulous wealth when he passed away. That gave the young and wealthy Alden the opportunity to retire at the age of 27 from being an architect and travel all over the world.
Gianni’s: The Versace Mansion Restaurant
Kelly Clarkson famously jumped into the pool after she won an MTV award. The restaurant at the Versace Mansion is called Gianni’s and you’ll need reservations ahead of time. Breakfast is for guests only and then anyone can make reservations for lunch or dinner. In 2018, American Crime Story did a special on Versace’s assassination that reignited interest into the fashion designer’s life and the house itself.
If a $1,000-plus-a-night hotel room is out of reach, members of the public can indulge in the villa's Baroque grandeur with a dinner reservation at Gianni's, and an aperitif in the intimate, clubby Onyx Bar, in the space that used to be Versace's kitchen. Then when I stayed here, we had dinner reservations one night and it was unfortunately underwhelming. Miami has SO many good restaurants and this one just did not hold up this time around. While it’s not large, the pool is so intricately designed that it is pretty special to use.
"Cunanan, when he arrived in Miami Beach, had pawned some coins on the north end of the beach at a pawn shop," said Barreto. "And the pawn shops are required to report their transactions every 24 hours to the police department." Versace, 50, was fatally shot by a man named Andrew Cunanan, 27, who was already the target of a nationwide manhunt by the FBI for killing at least four other men across the country. Fashion designer Donatella Versace and her brother Gianni sit among the artworks they had collected in their Milan home. With countless items in his collection, Versace, who began his studies in architecture and then abandoned them in favor of fashion, opted to use these beautiful items to decorate multiple properties around the world. Here, his vivid imagination could express itself differently than it did when working on clothes.
An avid collector of mosaics, Versace installed an elaborate Mediterranean-style mosaic garden. The designs depict a pantheon of Greek gods and mythological figures including, most notably, Medusa. Mosaics also appear in the pool, on floors, in courtyards, and on walls. For the outdoor areas, he hired English landscape designer and gardener Roy Strong. Gianni’s offers guests a delicious selection of Italian Mediterranean dishes and fine wines.
The Mansion is also availablefor corporate events and weddings.
Immerse yourself in our unique restaurant setting steeped in history by our Mosaic Pool or Indoor Dining space the backdrop to your dining experience. Gianni’s Restaurant at The Villa , with it’s pebbled mosaic walls and storied history offers a refined blend of Italian Mediterranean food and wine selections. The hit series explored the assassination of Gianni Versace, who was gunned down right on the front steps of his Ocean Drive mansion in 1997. You can book your stay here; or, if you find the daily rates at the former celebrity mansion to be out of reach, there are plenty of vacation rentals and hotels nearby. It’ll cost you upwards of $1,000 to spend a night in the Versace mansion. And if you feel like splurging even more, you can even sleep in Gianni Versace’s former bedroom.
The founder of the Italian fashion house that bore his name would direct a telescope through the opening of his observatory and take in the moon and the stars. It’s not hard to picture him, maybe adorned in a housecoat and slippers of his own design, escaping into his imagination in the sky above his Miami Beach mansion, on Ocean Drive. And for a steep price, you can be among the few to take in the heavens just like Versace. Many of the architectural details of the house, including an observatory, key lime coral flooring and about 100 medallions of notable figures installed on the walls - Cleopatra, Gandhi, Rockefeller, Mussolini and Lenin – date to Freeman’s time in the house.
In 1992, while on vacation with his family in Miami Beach, Versace took a walk down Ocean Drive and was immediately attracted to the house by the “Kneeling Aphrodite” statue and fell in love with the unique Spanish architecture of the property. Obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology, Versace purchased the original house built by Freeman for $2.95 million and the lot next door, an old art deco hotel called the Hotel Revere. Gianni Versace’s mansion in the sunshine state stands out as a prime example of what a fashion designer’s home should be. Built in 1930 as an apartment complex by Standard Oil heir Alden Freeman, the Spanish Colonial-style structure originally featured 24 apartments that Alden used to facilitate friends and other visitors. In 1937, following Freeman’s death from illness, the property was purchased for $100,000 by Jacques Amsterdam and renamed Amsterdam Apartments. The apartment complex passed through a number of owners until Versace laid eyes on it in 1992 and transformed it into one of the country's grandest mansions.
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