A Very Stately Pleasure Dome
Sir James Goldsmith’s Mexican eco-sanctuary is open for business.
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A pleasure dome is, by definition, a monumental testament to one man’s perseverance, purse, power and even madness. It is often a folly that defies time, the tired and temporal. But while you can read about Kubla Khan’s Xanadu pad in Coleridge’s poem, visit mad King Ludwig II’s 19th-century Neuschwanstein in Bavaria (the model for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle) or tour William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon, the only pleasure dome you can actually check in to is Cuixmala, or "Soul Haven," the 2,000-acre estate on Mexico’s Costa Alegre that was built by Sir James Goldsmith, the Anglo-French billionaire who died of a heart attack at age 64 in 1997.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
The former pleasure palace of billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, Cuixmala rests on
Mexico’s Pacific coast between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo. (Click image to enlarge.) Cuixmala’s story begins a decade earlier. In 1987 Sir Jimmy, not satisfied with multiple homes on multiple continents, did his pleasure dome decree. Having accumulated approximately 20,000 acres on Mexico’s rugged, remote, achingly beautiful Pacific coast between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, Goldsmith hired Parisian-born, New York–based designer Robert Couturier to build him not a house or estate but a mini universe—a solar system of villas and outbuildings to accommodate a wife, an ex-wife, their children and an army of servants, tutors, biologists, secretaries and pilots. These satellites—if that is indeed the correct term for a 25,000-square-foot beachfront abode; a 15,000-square-foot guest complex with views of lakes, rivers, mountains and a dormant volcano; as well as two additional commodious houses—would in turn revolve around La Loma, a 60,000-square-foot Moorish-Mughal supernova high on a cliff that housed Goldsmith, his longtime mistress and their children.
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One of the estate’s many structures available for rent, La Loma’s interior
courtyard and tiled dome evoke Moorish architecture. (Click image to enlarge.)
"Jimmy represents a male fantasy. He did what other men never did, couldn’t
do or never allowed themselves to do. He was like someone from another time—a
king, an emperor, a sultan," say Couturier, who spent upward of 15 years working
on assorted Goldsmith properties: a New York townhouse, a 1640 chateau in
Burgundy, a Spanish Colonial hacienda also in Mexico, and even a private Boeing
757.
Construction on Cuixmala commenced in January 1988. Created as an amalgam
of exotic styles, it was to be imposing but not overwhelming, and it became,
according to Couturier, "a direct parallel to what was in Jimmy’s mind: a
castle." Not the dark and dank European variety, nor a New World Mayan temple,
but a fantastical palace with swimming pools and dependent buildings, a
brilliant Versailles surrounded by an equally vivid jungle in lieu of a walled
park, all under a hot tropical sun.
Cuixmala
+52.315.351.0044
www.cuixmala.com
