Why Hollywood Wants Elizabeth Taylor’s House Gone – HT

 

 

 

Elizabeth Taylor’s Bel Air house, the place she called home for 30 years. Liz Taylor, the woman who had everything. Fame, fortune, beauty, diamonds that made the world gasp, an Oscar-winning career that spanned seven decades. She was royalty without a crown. And this is where she chose to live. A 7,000 square foot ranch house behind gates in Bel Air.

Nothing flashy, just a home filled with art, laughter, family, and love. But you won’t believe what would happen to this memorable house, this piece of Hollywood history after Elizabeth died. You would never guess. So today, we’re going inside. 709 Nimes Road sits behind private gates in Bel Air, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

The house itself was built in the 1960s. Elizabeth bought this house in early 1982 for about $2 million. Before that, it had been home to Frank Sinatra’s first wife, Nancy Sinatra Sr. A developer came in, gutted the old single-story place, and added a second floor. About 7,000 square feet, six bedrooms, over an acre of land.

Then Elizabeth walked in, took one look, and thought, “Yes, this is where I can finally just live.” Can you picture that decision? After decades of film sets, hotel suites, and wild houses designed to impress studio bosses, she chose a ranch house on a quiet road. No dramatic driveway, no Versailles staircase, just enough room for kids, grandkids, dogs, cats, and far too many shoes.

Now, the house has two floors, and the main floor, that’s where the magic really starts. You step in, and you’re immediately in this big open living room. Wood-beam ceiling, wood-burning fireplace. It moves into a sitting room, then the dining room. And here’s what I love about it. All of these rooms have direct access to the outer pool and terrace.

In a corner of the living room, a Frans Hals portrait, a David Hockney print, and next to that, Andy Warhol’s famous Liz silk screen. An interesting fact is that Andy gave it to her himself. Elizabeth also owned pieces by Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro. The woman was literally surrounded by masterpieces every single day.

Her personal assistant said that even though she lived with paintings by these masters, she wanted people to feel comfortable enough to spill a drink and not freak out. Can you imagine that? Spilling wine near Van Gogh and Elizabeth just laughing it off? That tells you everything about who she was. And it wasn’t just art.

 Every single room was filled with orchids and family photographs. This was a home with a soul. Friends say that if you expected a glittering palace, you were disappointed immediately. Doris Brynner, one of her close friends, called it just a house, not a showy house. Elizabeth worked with interior designer Waldo Fernandez to put it all together.

At first, he decorated everything in white. Carpets, furniture, all of it. Back in 1984, he tried to talk her out of it. She had grandkids, dogs, and cats. White was a nightmare. She didn’t care. She wanted the white. So he gave it to her. They just had, as he put it, things cleaned and recovered a lot. Then around 2010, she decided she wanted lavender.

So her bedroom went through the same kind of journey. Started with white fabric, a little purple and yellow flowers, then redesigned in blue. And if you think about it, those are exactly the colors people associated with Elizabeth the most. Those unmistakable violet eyes. Coincidence? I don’t think so. But that’s not all the first floor had.

There was a country kitchen, two powder rooms, and one of them, it came with a sauna and a shower specifically for the pool. Then you had the master suite, two more bedrooms with direct garden access, so you could step right out into those pansies and orchids we talked about, and staff quarters, because running a house like this wasn’t a one-person job.

Every inch of this place was thoughtful, lived in. Designer Valentino remembered that Elizabeth would show up to events dripping in diamonds and gowns. But at home, she wanted something else. Good food, friends, and a cozy sofa. This is where it gets interesting, because yes, she had some of the most famous jewels on Earth, but she also adored wall-to-wall carpet and fried chicken.

Her long-time assistant Tim Mendelson joked that for all the glamour, she was a people person who loved comfort probably as much as she loved diamonds. And then there was the trophy room that deserves its own moment. It was located on the ground floor, where Elizabeth kept all of her awards and honors. Golden statues, framed certificates, photos of Elizabeth with presidents, royalty, and fellow actors.

This is where she kept her Oscars, her humanitarian awards, and the proof of a life lived in front of the world. I mean, think about the level of talent it takes to fill an entire room with awards. Just incredible. Not bad for a girl who started as a child star in National Velvet riding a horse. We climb the stairs and enter Elizabeth’s bedroom.

It’s not minimal, not influencer beige. It’s old-school Hollywood feminine. A high bed dressed in Pratesi linens, floral Schumacher wallpaper, a painting of a deer that she painted as a teenager hanging on the wall. Now, let’s go outside, because the garden, the garden told its own story. Elizabeth worked with landscape designer Nicholas Walker on this one.

 And from the start, Elizabeth had a very specific vision. She wanted to recreate an authentic English herbaceous border. She wanted delphiniums all year long. English garden, Los Angeles weather. Easy, right? Not so much. Walker had to gently explain that Southern California doesn’t really do all year delphiniums. So he improvised.

They used plants from around the world that could give her the same feel. He remembered that her desire was always for color and more color all the time. Let’s be bold. They ended up planting pansies throughout the garden. And honestly, it worked beautifully. But the garden wasn’t just about plants. You can really see how family-oriented Elizabeth was by the way she created these special moments for everyone.

Every year she threw an Easter party. She’d set up a little petting zoo for the kids right there in the garden. Sometimes she’d even book performers from Cirque du Soleil to do acrobatics outside. There was always some kind of surprise, always something unexpected. And there was one detail that really stuck with me.

Her daughter, Liza Todd Tivey, created a bronze calf sculpture for the garden. Its twin is standing in a town square in Gstaad, Switzerland, the place where Elizabeth and Richard Burton had a chalet. Even the garden held memories of past lives and past loves. Now we need to talk about the closets, because Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t just a star.

 She understood glamour better than anyone else in Hollywood. All those designer gowns, all those legendary shoes, they needed a home. Photographer Catherine Opie captured rows and rows of Chanel pumps, personalized cowboy boots, handbags lined up like museum items. Except this museum smelled like perfume and face powder. Her granddaughter, Naomi Wilding, remembers that there used to be a guest room where she slept.

 Then one day she came over, and the room was gone. It had been turned into another closet. And the jewelry collection, it was one of the most valuable in the entire world. The Krupp diamond, emeralds, pearls that caught light like stars. Opie photographed them beautifully, racked focus, all refraction and reflection, trying to capture something beyond just their price tag.

And these tiny, human, unglamorous little details. Now, after Elizabeth’s death, something really touching happened. And it says a lot about how we value memory. Her belongings didn’t just quietly disappear. They were cataloged, photographed, and put up for auction by Christie’s. Cut to New York, December 2011.

Elizabeth’s jewelry collection goes under the hammer. By the end of the two-day jewelry auction, the total is staggering. $137,235,575, making it the most valuable private jewelry collection ever sold at auction at the time. La Peregrina, the pearl Richard Burton gave her, sold for about 11.84 million. The 39.

19 carat diamond ring he also gave her, the one which Christie’s billed as the Elizabeth Taylor diamond, >> [music] >> fetches a little over 8.8 million. And that’s just two pieces. But it wasn’t just jewelry. Dresses she wore [music] on screen and off, handbags, memorabilia from her films and her marriages, objects from her everyday life.

All of it. People fly in from all over the world. Some are serious collectors. Some just want a tiny piece of her. A dress, a handbag, a little something that once hung in those Bel Air closets, or sat on those mirrored shelves. The house, meanwhile, sits quietly on its hill. After Elizabeth’s death, her house was put up for sale.

Guide price, 8.6 million dollars. Not cheap. But for Bel Air, that’s actually kind of modest. Rocky Malhotra bought it first, an Indian businessman who made his fortune in razor blades. Flash forward to 2021. 10 years after Elizabeth’s death, the house quietly changes hands again. This time it doesn’t even hit the usual glossy real estate listings.

 It sells off-market for about 11 million to Ardie Tavangarian, a high-profile Los Angeles developer known for building extravagant mansions for the ultra-wealthy. Architectural Digest reports on the deal under a blunt headline, “Elizabeth Taylor’s former Bel Air home sells for 11 million and will be torn down.

” They note that the buyer is planning to demolish the estate and replace it with something new. Other coverage repeats the same point. The plan isn’t to lovingly restore Elizabeth’s ranch house. The plan is to use the land, over an acre in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles, for a brand new luxury build.

Now, as of early 2026, there hasn’t been widely reported confirmation that the bulldozers have actually rolled. The key fact we have is the owner’s intention and the reporting that the house will be torn down, or is planned to be demolished. In other words, the sword is still hanging, even if it hasn’t dropped.

So now we arrive at the central question. The one this entire story has been leading us to. Why did Graceland, Elvis’s home, become a museum that about 600,000 people visit every single year, but a house where one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history lived for three decades, can just disappear? Apparently, that’s just expensive real estate in a good neighborhood.

So here’s my question. What matters more? Square footage, or history? Should we protect homes like 700 Nimes Road? Should we turn them into museums like Graceland? Or do we just let them go? On one hand, you can’t save every celebrity’s house, but on the other hand, this was Elizabeth Taylor’s home. Hollywood loves to tell you it respects its own history.

Costumes go into museum shows. Cars from famous films are restored and displayed. Studios sell tours where you can touch the fake walls where movie magic happened. But when it comes to the actual places where legends lived their daily lives, the market is ruthless. Elizabeth Taylor’s Bel Air house is a perfect example.

It’s not the most architecturally unique home in Los Angeles. It’s not by a star architect. It’s not a formal landmark. It’s just a ranch-style house that a famous woman turned into a family nest. Developers look at it and see something simple. A relatively small, older structure sitting on very valuable land.

The land is the real star of the show. The house is just in the way. The very things Elizabeth loved about this place, its modesty, its coziness, its casual warmth, are what make it a target. If she had built some giant, self-important monument to her own fame, the odds of it being preserved might actually be higher.

Instead, she built a life. Hollywood knows how to protect a legend. It’s less good at protecting a life. So what is this story really about? It’s about [music] memory. It’s about legacy. It’s about how we treat the places that shaped us, even long after the people who loved them are gone. If you want more stories like this, hit subscribe, tap the like button, and share this video with a friend who loves classic Hollywood as much as you do.