Take a look inside the world’s most expensive house
- The Champ de Bataille is the priciest home on Earth
- The library is lined with ancient mummies
- There is a miniature Indian palace in the garden
Published on Nov 17, 2023 at 6:06 PM (UTC+4)
by Andie Reeves
Last updated on Nov 20, 2023 at 10:22 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Alessandro Renesis
The Champ de Bataille is the priciest home on Earth.
But, somewhat surprisingly, it’s not owned by the richest person in the world.
This French castle belongs to Jacques Garcia, an interior designer who has dedicated his life to restoring it.
And he’s filled it with some of the weirdest and most expensive furniture he could find.
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The Champ de Bataille is an old castle in Normandy, France.
It’s the home of interior-designer-to-the-stars Jacques Garcia.
He bought it for an undisclosed sum back in 1992 and took on the mammoth task of renovating it.
This isn’t your average fixer-upper, and so far Garcia has spent 30 years working on it.
The home is a minimalist’s nightmare, opulently decorated with over 20,000 objects in a classic French style.
Almost every piece is a valuable antique, including items owned by people like Napoleon and Marie Antoinette.
He paid special attention to the garden, which is known as the Versailles of Normandy.
The grounds, which take two hours to explore fully, feature a huge maze, a waterfall, a tropical greenhouse, and an amphitheater made out of volcanic rock.
While most of us were doing puzzles or baking banana bread during COVID-19, Garcia took on a slightly bigger project.
He built a Playboy-esque grotto in his garden where he hosts wild underground parties.
Some parts of this home are open to the public, but we can only guess how many rooms there are in total.
One thing we know for sure is that every inch of the place is decorated with expensive and bizarre items Garcia has collected over the years.
It’s rumored he buys something every day, which is not hard to believe given how busy the walls of this place are.
What used to be an indoor swimming pool is now a two-story library that holds 15,000 books and is lined with real mummies.
Another room has stuffed reptiles like crocodiles and snakes stuck onto the ceiling.
Garcia enjoys his meals in a miniature palace on the grounds, built from the remains of an Indian palace that collapsed in an earthquake.
He eats sitting underneath a stuffed leopard, complete with a pearl-encrusted collar.
Sometimes Garcia sells some of his antiques for extra cash.
Recently he sold two candlesticks for $130,000 and a chair for $217,000.
So while the home itself is worth millions, the incredible objects it holds push its worth into the billions.
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Andie is a content writer from South Africa with a background in broadcasting and journalism. Starting her career in the glossy pages of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, Andie has a broad portfolio, covering everything from sustainability solutions to celebrity car collections. When not at her laptop Andie can be found sewing, recording her podcast, taking board games too seriously or road-tripping in her bright green Kia.