“HIGH on a clifftop overlooking a vast bay empty of shipping thanks to a mile-wide exclusion zone imposed by its autocratic owner, a giant glistening palace built to one man’s ludicrous vainglory peeps through a woodland screen. For years ‘living like royalty’ has been the phrase by which ordinary people have focused their envies and ambitions. But this gargantuan, surreal edifice, which swarms over 190,000 square feet, is beyond the delusions of grandeur of even the maddest of acquisitive monarchs. In size and opulence it makes the homes of our Royal Family look positively diminutive and threadbare — and that is before we take so much as a glimpse through the keyhole. For inside it is a temple to gaudy vulgarity and a monument to money-no-object bad taste.

“… Bigger than Buckingham Palace, grander than Versailles, it dwarfs in scale the comparable home of any other global leader. But in its extravagance it mirrors the remarkable rise and rise of President Putin who, in little more than three decades, has transformed himself from impecunious KGB officer to become — reputedly — one of the richest men in the world with a fortune of £160 billion ($218 billion).”

Read more here. Video tour here.

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