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Museums
Previous Reviews:The Milwaukee Art Museum
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Artpoints visits the Hearst CastleOn a beautiful spring day this April we drove up one of the last unspoiled stretches of coastal California on Highway 101 to San Simeon, home of Hearst Castle. Looking much as they have for decades the hills are green; wild mustard, California poppies and lupine bloom in abundance.
The Hearst Castle visitor center is a two hour drive, south from Monterrey and about one hour north of San Luis Obispo. The visitor center itself is a treat, full of gift shops with reproduced memorabilia from the Twenties in styles of Art Nouveau, Art Deco or Central California nature. The restaurants serve beef from the surrounding Hearst family ranch, and the beef can be shipped to your home if you are so inclined.
William Randolph Hearst was a publishing magnate at the beginning of the Twentieth Century when publishing could make one very rich indeed. One of his projects was to build, on land inherited from his father, a castle inspired by those he visited in Europe as a young boy. The hilltop site was originally a rustic family camp, but Hearst renamed it “La Cuesta Encantada”, the enchanted hill, when he retained a a San Francisco architect, Julia Morgan to help him build “a little something”. The two worked together for decades to build the ever-expanding castle. It was a remarkable partnership combining Miss Morgan’s Beaux Arts style and engineering genius with Hearst’s artistic passions and seemingly unlimited funds. The castle resembles an ancient, beautifully maintained, castle in Spain. Built by craftsmen brought to the United States from Europe after the First World War, the tile and wood work was made locally.
When W. R. Hearst died, the castle, the grounds, the art and the furnishings were donated in trust to the State of California and have become the crown jewel of the California State Park system. Tourists come from all over the world to experience the castle, so making reservations for tours is advisable.
The castle is too vast for a single visit, so visitors must choose. Tour One is recommended for first-timers. It includes a showing of “Building the Dream”, a 45 minute film on the history of the region and of the building of the castle. We enjoyed this tour on a previous visit, and were eager to further explore the Castle’s riches.
Because the day and the weather was so glorious we chose the garden tour where, in addition to the garden, we would visit the kitchen, the wine cellar and the actual guest-house residences of William Randolph Hearst and family.
As we rode a bus up a narrow winding road, we could see the hilltop Castle at each turn glowing white with Spanish inspired towers. We hoped to glimpse one of the exotic animals such a zebras descended from the Castle’s original zoo roaming the grounds. The garden tours is limited to ten guests, allowing an up-close and personal experience. We were met by a knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide who was well versed in local history and botany. The garden’s were in glorious bloom, and the orange, lemon and grapefruit trees were hung with fruit. The kitchen gardens supplied herbs, vegetable and fruits for the kitchen as well as ornamental flowers for the rooms and tables.
The gardens are embellished with tiles, and reproduction sculptures as well as original statues, wellheads and vases from Italy and Spain.
Inside the guest houses, the interior decor is a glorious, lavish mash-up of Medieval and Renaissance artifacts purchased by Hearst’s buyers throughout Europe in the years following WWI. Julia Morgan’s inspired design combines these disparate elements into a coherent and unified statement of architectural harmony. Artpoints recommends a visit to this extraordinary location full of art, history and a view of what tremendous wealth partnered with artistic taste can provide. For an inexpensive vacation, you can visit California wineries, tour the art galleries of Cambria full of original watercolors celebrating the coast of Central California and, finally, visit Hearst Castle, all without a passport or the expense of international travel. More about Hearst Castle including reservations for the various tours is available online at:
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