In Brian De Palma’s mob film Scarface, once his enemies are subdued and money starts flowing in, bossman Tony Montana (Al Pacino) decides to chill and live the American life. Like many expats from Cuba and Puerto Rico who run the underworld, he chooses a fortress-style estate in Miami to do the chilling in. The mansion is also the location for his marriage to Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), and later, for his death, but let’s not talk about unpleasant things here. Just one thing: the reel life house may be located in Miami; the real-life one sits near Los Angeles.
We know because the house, with swimming pools, palm trees and all, is up for sale. El Fureidis (which means ‘Tropical Paradise’) is a palatial residence set across 10 acres in Montecito, Santa Barbara. It was built in 1906, when a large chunk of California was still undeveloped. El Fureidis is, thus, one of the older buildings in the area. They say James Waldron Gillespie, who built the mansion, travelled the world seeking inspiration for the building. He and his architect friend Bertram Goodhue went across Europe scouting for ideas, and even travelled to India—on horseback—before coming back and creating their tropical paradise.
One is not surprised to know that Goodhue was a designer of Spanish-revival buildings. With its flat roof and white walls, El Fureidis resembles a Andalusian abode. Set behind high walls, the house is approached through a colonnaded driveway. Spanning more than 10,000 sq ft, the mansion has four large bedrooms and nine bathrooms. There is also a Byzantine-style ‘conversation room’ and indoor and outdoor fountains, a bar, patio and spa, and gorgeous views of the Pacific, islands and mountains from all the roof terraces—in short, everything a mafia boss needs for entertaining guests at home while keeping a watch on the world outside.
While the architecture is phenomenal, the 10 acres of gardens—which boast both wild Mediterranean foliage and formal, Persian-style gardens—and multiple levels of cascading pools are even more spectacular. Original owner Gillespie was a keen botanist and reportedly planted a rare collection of trees, including palms, sequoias and redwoods. Many have survived; some are over a hundred years old.
It isn’t just Scarface that El Fureidis can boast of; over the years, the mansion has housed many famous guests. John Kennedy and Jackie are rumoured to have spent a portion of their honeymoon here. The grounds witnessed the nuptials of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill. Walt Disney visited in 1957 and was so fascinated by the fauna that he took away some of the palm trees to plant at Disney Land. Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann, who once owned the mansion, threw parties here for Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein.
The El Fureidis estate was last in the market in 2006 for $37.5 million. The estate’s current Russian banker owner, who is believed to have carried out multimillion-dollar renovations, is making allowances for the recession. His asking price is only $35 million.
If you are looking to go further south, and would rather rent than buy, there’s footballer Ronaldinho’s house in Rio de Janeiro to consider. The Brazilian is renting out his house for the duration of the FIFA World Cup. If you’ve got $15,400 a night to spend on accommodation and would like to stay in a gated community in Rio’s Barra da Tijuca neighborhood, this is the place for you.
The 10,800-sq ft villa is a recent construction and contains five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool and a home theatre. The house has a sauna, barbecue and fridge dedicated to beer. There’s also a ‘service team’ to attend to the guests, who must smoke outdoor. But yes, they have access to the entire house, including the wine cellar, zen room for massages and yoga, and a ‘samba stage’. The house is sparsely decorated on the whole but has plenty of Ronaldinho’s paintings art–just in case you forget where you are.