# South Beach's Most Sensational Hotel: Inside the Versace Mansion > Step inside the Versace Mansion on Ocean Drive, South Beach Miami's most sensational hotel. Pure luxury amid the neon lights. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/vseredyni-osobnyaka-versache/ - Language: en - Published: 2023-11-01 - Categories: Culture, Restaurants, Hotels, USA, Relaxation, Events --- World-famous Ocean Drive is one of the best-known stretches of Miami Beach, but with its neon lights and sidewalk cafes serving beer-garitas for two, it isn't exactly known as an upscale destination. The exception is Casa Casuarina, a villa tucked among the low-rise art deco hotels that streams of tourists stroll past every day. Many of those tourists snapping selfies out front may not realize that the former home of the late fashion designer Gianni Versace is neither a museum nor a private residence, but a hotel. And it's a hotel where guests can sleep in Versace's own bedroom. Or in his sister Donatella's. Or perhaps in the room where Madonna stayed when she visited Versace in the 1990s and helped put Miami Beach's South Beach neighborhood on the national map. If a room costing more than $1,000 a night is out of reach, visitors can still soak up the baroque grandeur of the villa by booking dinner at Gianni's restaurant and an aperitivo at Onyx, the intimate, club-like bar set in what was once Versace's kitchen. After Versace's death (he was shot on the steps of his mansion in 1997, which is why tourists gather on the street with their cameras) the property changed hands several times. Yet even now, 20 years on and under the ownership of Jordache Enterprises, it retains all of the designer's opulence. (In 2001, Donatella auctioned off part of the home's contents, but the lavishly decorated walls, floors, ceilings and windows remained, along with the pool, the garden and the south wing.) ## The Most Famous Mansion on Ocean Drive ![](/storage/image/prev/USA-1-Versace-Mansion-1024x640.jpg) The unabashed luxury of Casa Casuarina made it an obvious setting for the series "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story," which premieres on FX on January 19, 2018. In May 2017, tourists along Ocean Drive got to see the show's stars in costume, including Penelope Cruz as Donatella, Ricky Martin as Versace's longtime partner Antonio D'Amico, and Edgar Ramirez as the designer, appearing on the balcony of Versace's former bedroom. That room is now known as the Villa Suite, and like the rest of the mansion's interiors, it glitters as brightly as any Versace collection. Its most striking feature, also found in Donatella's bedroom, the Venus suite, is a king-size four-poster bed. No longer on display is Versace's $10,000 marble toilet with its 24-karat gold-plated seat, one of the items Donatella sold at auction after her brother's death. ## From a Flamboyant Home to a Modern Hotel ![](/storage/image/prev/USA-2-Versace-Mansion-1024x640.jpg) Today Casa Casuarina has 10 hotel suites, plus a restaurant and bar, a lounge that can be used for meetings, a rooftop, and an elaborate Mediterranean-style mosaic garden with tiles depicting figures from Greek mythology, chief among them Medusa, who holds pride of place in the Versace brand logo. The most intricate Medusa can be found in the villa's 54-foot pool, inspired by the Versace "Marine Vanuras" collection and said to be made from more than a million mosaic tiles, thousands of them 24-karat gold. The Medusa mosaic was crafted in Versace's hometown of Reggio Calabria, Italy, then dismantled and shipped in pieces to Miami Beach, where it was painstakingly reassembled. Next to the garden, in the "new wing" that Versace built after acquiring the mansion, is the Moroccan lounge, which used to be his gym and still houses a Turkish steam room and a hammam shower for eight. The room where Madonna stayed, the Mosaic Suite, sits upstairs, where the singer apparently loved the acoustics of the bathroom and the bird's-eye view of the pool. ## The Story of Casa Casuarina Versace bought Casa Casuarina in 1992, falling under the spell of the Magic City and the grand home's Spanish architecture. Next door stood an art deco hotel called the Hotel Revere, which Versace also purchased and demolished to make room for his garden, pool and south wing, once home to one of his libraries. The renovation, estimated at $32 million, transformed the historic mansion over three years into an estate fit for the king of style. But even before he arrived, Casa Casuarina had a colorful history. It was built in 1930 by Alden Freeman, whose father worked for the Standard Oil Trust and left him a fortune that allowed him to retire at 27 and build his dream house, inspired by the historic Alcazar de Colon in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Freeman lived in a top-floor apartment, while the remaining 23 apartments housed his friends or were rented out. Many of the home's architectural details, including the coral limestone floors, the columns surrounding the courtyard, and the decorative medallions bearing famous faces (Cleopatra, Gandhi, Rockefeller and, more jarringly, Mussolini and Lenin) date back to Freeman's time, which ended after his death in 1937, when the house was sold and used as an apartment complex. By the 1980s the building had fallen into disrepair, though most of the original furnishings and artworks survived. ## The Mansion's Secrets Like many famous homes, Casa Casuarina has its share of mysteries. Rumor has it the mansion holds hidden doors and passages, though the door that once led from Versace's bedroom into an entertainment room has since been sealed. It's also said that Versace kept a pigeon loft beneath the rooftop observatory and used the birds to send notes to friends. The details of these rumors are scarce, but one thing is certain: the villa will keep intriguing visitors, and no doubt even more so when the television series airs next year.