Commanding the crest of Southern California’s Palos Verdes Peninsula in exclusive Rolling Hills Estates, Hacienda de la Paz is surely the best-kept secret in Los Angeles—a meticulously conceived Spanish hacienda whose warmth and comfort belie its hidden grandeur. As featured on the cover of the L.A. Times, this home is undoubtedly one of California’s most unique and stunning.
This magnificent residence ($53,000,000) sits on more than eight acres and enjoys one of the most panoramic views of Los Angeles imaginable—a 180-degree vista that encompasses virtually the entire Los Angeles Basin, with views ranging from downtown to the San Gabriel Mountains to the white-strand beaches of Santa Monica Bay, all afforded from a bright patio with an infinity pool. All told, the hacienda’s living areas comprise nearly 50,000 square feet—but they unfold in subtle and unexpected ways that preserve a sense of both intimacy and naturalness.
The nine-bedroom main residence is notable for its stately library/office, a media room, a traditional kitchen, game room, and bar. The estate also pays imaginative tribute to other Spanish influences—most notably the Moorish, and a full-size Moroccan-style Turkish bath, or hammam, graces a hidden, lower level and comprises 10,000 square feet alone, with a dazzling cobalt-blue lap pool as its centerpiece. The Turkish spa is a temperature and humidity-controlled world unto itself, decorated with 24-karat gold tiles, fountains, and imported columns and corbels. Perhaps most dramatically and unexpectedly, the estate also pays tribute to the neoclassical heritage of Spain with a magnificent subterranean ballroom that also serves as a regulation tennis court and emergency shelter. Some five stories high and capable of seating 350 guests with a stage accommodating a 30-piece orchestra, this vast room is decorated with floor-to-ceiling trompe l’oeil murals, a large overhead balcony, separate kitchen and prep rooms, is fully equipped for various lighting and sound requirements, and boasts its own separate 400-amp power circuit. The ballroom also doubles as the ultimate safe room. All buildings are structurally engineered to counteract seismic activity and all walls are braced with steel beams, tie-downs, and shear walls.
Outside, the hacienda grounds include a red-clay tennis court built to French Open specs, orchards consisting of more than 26 varieties of fruit and nut trees, a private bridle trail, small pet sanctuary, and a bocce court. The grounds are entirely private and protected by 24-hour security. Seventeen years in the making, Hacienda de la Paz was completed in 2008 and remains a one-of-a-kind, tranquil, yet grand residence that harks back to an early 1900s country estate in Andalusia.
