From The Wall Street Journal:
Robert and Krystal Rivani posed side-by-side in Medieval attire, she in a gold-trimmed cape and tiara-style headband, he in black fur, armored gloves and a gold crown. Carrying long, embellished swords, they looked stern.
The resulting oil painting would hang in the Great Hall of their elaborate California home, Castle Rivani.
The couple, both 32, have spent several years and roughly $4 million turning their chateau-style Beverly Hills home into a novelty-filled paradise reflecting their love of fantasy and magic. The living room contains a replica of the spiked iron throne from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” The bar has a “Harry Potter”-themed apothecary cabinet, and the backyard is modeled after “Alice in Wonderland.” There is also a Jungle Room with walls covered in faux greenery.
“Being ‘extra’ is everything to us,” said Ms. Rivani. “It makes life fun and interesting and memorable.”
. . . .
Mr. Rivani, a real estate and hospitality investor, grew up in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. He was a “Harry Potter” fanatic as a child, he said, and loved escaping into the fantasy world of witchcraft and wizardry, spending hours in line to get tickets for the movies when they premiered. He met his future wife at a nightclub in Hollywood when both were in their early 20s, and Ms. Rivani quickly got into Harry Potter, too, saying that she found the visuals gave her inspiration for parties and events. The couple developed a similar infatuation with “Game of Thrones.”
The two were married in 2018, and bought their Beverly Hills house in December 2019 for $13.77 million. The roughly 15,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom home, which sits on 1.7 acres, had been previously owned by entrepreneur David Gebbia and his ex-wife, Carlton Gebbia of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” Built by Mr. Gebbia’s construction firm and completed around 2014, the house was originally designed to combine Ms. Gebbia’s Gothic tastes with her husband’s penchant for Italian Romanticism, Mr. Gebbia said. It has a decorative stone facade with intricate carvings and arched, church-style windows.
A devout Wiccan, Ms. Gebbia filled the house with cross carvings, wooden gargoyles, an altar and a confessional. After the Gebbias split, the house went on the market and the interior was stripped of some of its more unusual décor to help attract a wider pool of buyers, Mr. Gebbia said. Nevertheless, the property, which was initially listed for $22 million in 2018, lingered on the market for close to two years and underwent several price cuts before selling to the Rivanis.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal
PG says:
- The photos in the OP are must-view.
- In his horrifyingly humble opinion, the interior is over the top to the max.
My partner Susan looked at the pictures with me and said, “Colour me unimpressed, but I was born in a Manor house built around a Norman watchtower the thick end of a thousand years old, with walls more than three feet thick, and under the dining room slate floor was a water cistern able to hold thousands of gallons of water.”
Good point, A.
I was guilty of thinking in suburban L.A. terms and forgetting about places like Hearst Castle and the Biltmore Estate, A., to say nothing about British and European castles, etc.
Yes, but her home wasn’t over the top – it was real.
This is LA, so it’s fake 🙂
Over the top for L.A? Just a little bit, maybe.
Hopefully, they’ll stay married, because if they split & sell, it’ll be a repeat of the previous owners, time two (or more).
(To be fair, expensive houses can take a lot time, and many price cuts, to sell, even if they’re not over the top weird).