Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle stands on a hilltop above San Simeon on California's central coast, built in stages between 1919 and 1947 for the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst to a design by the architect Julia Morgan, one of the first prominent female architects in the United States. The main house and its surrounding guesthouses combine Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival architectural elements with an extensive collection of art and antiquities Hearst imported from Europe, including entire historic ceilings and doorways and a Moorish-style outdoor swimming pool lined with imported marble. Construction stretched across nearly three decades and was still incomplete when Hearst's declining health forced him to leave the property permanently in 1947, meaning the estate as built never fully matched Morgan's or Hearst's original combined vision. The Hearst family donated the estate to the State of California in 1957, and it now operates as a state historical monument open to public tours, showcasing both its architecture and Hearst's extensive art collection.