Gianni Versace's Miami Villa From the location for parties and secrets of the Versace family to luxury hotels with a timeless charm

The third most photographed house in America after the White House and Graceland is on Ocean Drive, the street of Miami Beach where Art Deco' buildings and majestic villas stand out one on another. The place was the scene of the cold-blooded murder of its owner, Gianni Versace, the extremely creative designer and sensitive man who immediately got to understand fashion and its mechanisms in the late 80s. After revolutionizing female powerdressing and having appointed Linda Evangelista, Claudia Shiffer, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell as world’s first top models, he bought the villa in 1992. Versace decided to buy the house  after the bedazzling eye-encounter with the bronze Aphrodite sculture at the entrance, for 32 million dollars. He died on the gate only a few years later, in 1997, at the hands of the young model Andrew Cunanan, as told by the docu-series American Crime Story The Assassination of Gianni Versace. The Villa serves as a background in the most important scenes of the series, and great scenic work has made everything as faithful to the original as possible. The large suites designed and decorated in full Versace style, have over the years hosted FX crew and may other personalities such as Madonna, Princess Diana, Elton John who used to hang with the Versace Family, but in latest times also Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Jay-Z and Beyonce have rented the entire villa several times for private holidays and parties. Today Villa Casa Casuarina has been adapted to a luxury boutique hotel with an Italian restaurant that with its name pays homage to their former host, Gianni’s. Villa Versace has a captivating and mysterious charm, among the baroque decorations and the 24-carat gold mosaics are hidden many treasures to discover and stories to tell.

The Villa conceals secrets that after the death of the designer was no longer possible to reveal. The manager of the current luxury boutique hotel confirms that each room had secret passages that connected the rooms one to the others, to facilitate privacy. To date, for obvious reasons, the passages have been closed, but their functionality remains unknown. There is popular talk of a secret tunnel that passes under the mansion next to the monumental pool, and is accessible only through a hidden secret code among the pieces of the huge mosaic of the Medusa in front of the pool, according to Jim Dobson of Forbes and some locals. Another mystery that remained hidden is why Madonna wanted the toilets changed every time she returned to be a guest in the Villa. Surely frescoes and mosaics have seen moments, and in fact they speak for themselves in all their tacit solemn elegance.