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The hotel offers guests the chance to stay in any one of the luxury suites in the mansion, including Gianni’s suite. So, if you’ve always wanted to see how this fashion icon lived, you can book a stay at his former home and experience the extreme lavishness that is Villa Casa Casuarina for yourself. After Gianni’s death in 1997, the Casa Casuarina was left to the Versace family, who would go on to sell the home in 2000 for $19 million to Peter Loftin, a wealthy entrepreneur. Loftin transformed the property into a luxury boutique hotel and restaurant.
YouTube star FaZe Rug lives in a lavish $4.4M mansion in Poway, CA
I assume you still have to have some sort of reservation to go here (whether at the restaurant or the hotel). The room my friend and I stayed in has pastel colors on the walls and an ornate bed frame and light fixtures. It was a large room with a seating area and little nooks in the wall that had cushions and pillows. The Versace Mansion is located in the heart of South Beach on Ocean Drive between 11th and 12th Street. It’s come a long way from where it was when Gianni first set eyes on the property. Other stories have them squeezing the life out of drowning men while attempting to rescue them.
The mansion showcased Versace's glamorous aesthetic
He also added a 6,100-square-foot wing and a 54-foot-long mosaic-tiled pool that was inspired by his Marine Vanuras collection and made up of more than one million mosaic tiles. It was originally built as a covent in 1600 before being destroyed and rebuilt multiple times throughout the ensuing decades. It’s in this home that the visionary favored a more restrained classicism and used it to display portraits of Roman emperors and statues of various gods and heroes from both the Roman and Greek empires. In the interview, he explained that his roots growing up in Southern Italy, an area colonized by the ancient Greeks, heavily influenced his deep respect for the aesthetics and styles of the era. His guests at the time, including Madonna, Elton John, Princess Diana, and the musician Prince surely appreciated the splendor.
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What still remains here from the Versace era are the richly decorated walls, floors, ceilings, and windows, as well as the pool, garden, and the entire south wing. The tour concludes in the circular observatory that lords over the mansion from the far end of the central courtyard. Sardinia, who used to franchise the local stores for Versace, recalls nights spent up there with him. There’s a common belief that Versace used the mansion to host parties and house guests—famously including the likes of Madonna, Princess Diana and Elton John. But mostly he saw this house as his tranquil respite, Sardinia says, and he escaped to the observatory most nights. Despite its grim history, the Miami Beach mansion that was once owned by Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace hasn’t lost its appeal, still drawing crowds of tourists each year.
Guests can choose to enjoy their meal in the decadent dining room or near Gianni Versace’s famous gold-tiled swimming pool. After Versace's murder, the house sat empty for three years before Donatella sold it. After passing through the hands of two new owners, the mansion was purchased at auction for $41.5 million and is now operated by Victor Hotels Management as The Villa Casa Casuarina. Now, guests can host events and weddings at the Versace Mansion, spend the night (or many), and dine at the hotel's restaurant, appropriately named Gianni's. Versace spent $32 million and three years on renovations to transform 24 apartments into a home with 10 luxurious suites, 11 bathrooms, a library, and more. His changes respected the house's historic status, as when he kept busts in the courtyard that had been there when the house was first constructed; he even received an award for historic preservation.
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The Miami mansion was luxurious and filled with works of art such as Picassos but it wasn’t a museum-like space. He made it a comfortable place to live with his partner, Antonio D’Amico. Gianni Versace’s remains were cremated and returned to the Versace estate near Cernobbio, Italy. The ashes were buried in the family’s vault located at Moltrasio cemetery, not far from Lake Como. His funeral, which was held at Milan Cathedral, had over 2,000 attendees, including Sting, Giorgio Armani, Elton John, and Princess Diana. The photos of the crime scene where Gianni Versace was murdered are gruesome and tragic.
The renovations took almost 3 years to complete and in July 15, 1997, only 5 yrs after purchasing the home, Versace was killed on the front steps of the house on his usual morning walk home from News Cafe. A native New Yorker, Copeland first moved to Miami—coincidentally—just months before Versace. Copeland had a friend who lived on the third floor of the apartments thatoccupied the home back then, and he can vaguely remember the simpler appearance of the place. Donatella took over the company after her brother’s death, but her reign would be marked by ups and downs; by 2004, sales had fallen in four of the past seven years, despite price cuts and a renewed effort on products that could sell.
Staying at the Versace Mansion in Miami
Versace mansion's $41.5 million sale disappoints - CNBC
Versace mansion's $41.5 million sale disappoints.
Posted: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Freeman lived in a top-floor suite and either housed his friends or rented the 23 remaining apartments. Whether it’s the Versace name, the celebrity clientele or the Crime Story intrigue, the mansion on Ocean continues to draw people in. But it’s there, in the middle of one of the most famous streets in Miami, Florida, lined with restaurants, shops and tourists.
If you look around the pool, you will see the same symbolism Versace loved (circles, squares and triangles). Copeland has spent four decades in the hotel industry, and when he took over the property four years ago, it was his job to finally make a successful business out of the place.“Oh, it’s a money-making operation now,” Copeland says with unbridled pride. Perhaps it’s the coquina steps out front that you picture first when thinking about Versace’s home. It’s there, where he was slain in 1997, that has become the most famed section of what might be among the world’s most photographed residences. It is also said that Versace maintained a pigeon coop beneath the rooftop observatory and would use the messenger pigeons to send notes to friends.
The show was filmed at the mansion and gave an inside look into the house. Apparently, Gianni Versace was only in Miami to see his sister, Donatella, on a short stopover on his way to Cuba. He saw the building while walking down Ocean Drive on his layover and took a tour of the property. They were apartments at the time and Versace decided to buy it right then.
The property was divided into apartments, aimed at housing a community of artists and bohemians Freeman dreamed of living amongst. Coincidentally, it was that Grecian statue which caught the eye of Gianni Versace on that first walk through South Beach with Donatella. The millions Versace spent on renovations were meant to create a home he wanted to live in and not to increase resale value. This was demonstrated when the house went on the market after his 1997 murder. The mansion was again put up for sale in 2012, this time at a price of $125 million.
Andrew Cunanan was unemployed and frequently worked his way into the lives of wealthy older men so that he could spend their money. He went on to murder 5 people within 3 months, Versace included, until finally shooting himself on a houseboat in Miami Beach. He committed suicide with the same .40-caliber gun he shot and killed Gianni with as well as his other victim, former boyfriend David Madson. Versace nabbed the complex for a meager $2.95 million along with the Revere Hotel next door for $3.7 million.
Versace’s highly public death made his mansion a grim tourist attraction for several years, but Casa Casuarina’s strange story was far from over. By February 2001, Sotheby’s was preparing to auction many of Versace’s belongings; as Donatella told the Times, she had even made an effort to remove the Versace Medusa logos embedded within the house—at least, as many as she could. The property was sold to Peter Loftin, a telecom entrepreneur who, according to the Herald, began using the house to host parties for $10,000 a night, and later turned it into an invitation-only club with yearly dues of $3,600. (Loftin was already a member at Mar-a-Lago, owned by Donald Trump, who will show up again in this story soon). By 2005, the club had opened up to high-roller guests willing to spend up to $4,000 a night to stay in one of Versace’s former bedrooms. At that time, Ocean Drive was still an odd collection of small hotels, modeling agencies and senior citizen’s homes.
Freeman only lived in the mansion for a short time, in the company of his adopted son, Charles Boulton; according to Miami Beach historian Carolyn Klepser, interviewed by the Miami Herald, Boulton may have in fact been Freeman’s lover. Next door was an Art Deco Hotel called the Hotel Revere, which Versace also snapped up, and demolished to make way for his garden, pool and the south wing, which used to house one of his libraries. The most elaborate Medusa can be found in the Villa's 54-foot-long pool, inspired by Versace's "Marine Vanuras" collection and said to be made from more than one million mosaic tiles, thousands of them 24-karat gold. The most affordable way to get past the front gate is to make a lunch or dinner reservation at the hotel.
They also gave everyone a free glass of champagne at lunch for some reason, so that was nice. The thing is, is that they don’t really need to have amazing food because people are still going to go. And on top of that, the dragon fruit drink was also incredibly strong and I don’t remember it being that strong the previous times. You do get your alcohol content for what you pay, and one drink can make you tipsy. But, it was almost to that too strong point of just not tasting that good.
This exchange is significant because Barreto says Cunanan sold a gold coin he stole from one of his previous victims at that pawn shop and used his real name and the address of the hotel he was staying at to make the transaction. Villa Fontanelle on Lake Como served as Versace’s peaceful, classically inspired retreat. Following his death in 1997, the public became increasingly interested in the Lake Como villa after his family expressed the desire to bury their loved one in the family’s nearby tomb. There is something completely stunning about the beauty of the mansion that transports you to a different world.
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