History Main / BigFancyHouse

* Subverted with the new Federal Chancellery building in Berlin: while it is the largest government headquarters in the world (being ''eight times'' the size of the White House) and contains a 200 square meters "Chancellor's Apartment", only 28 of those square meters are reserved as private living space for the sitting Chancellor, the rest being occupied by rooms intended for public entertaining. Of the two [[UsefulNotes/TheChancellorsOfGermany Chancellors]] who have held office since the edifice was completed (Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel), only Schröder lived in it for any amount of time; Chancellor Merkel has preferred to live in her own private flat.

* The largest house in the United States is the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, the country estate of railroad heir George Washington Vanderbilt II. It occupies a gross area of 175,000 square feet and is larger than some royal palaces. It's been used in several films as the residence of somebody who obviously has enormous amounts of money, especially [[OldMoney ''old'' money]]. Examples:

* After the Great Fire of [[AncientRome Rome]] in 64, the emperor Nero ordered the construction of a gigantic new palace, the ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_Aurea Domus Aurea]]'' ("Golden House").[[note]]The name "house" was not an attempt at modesty; "''domus''" was specifically the Latin word for a rich family's townhouse, at least as applied to structures in Rome; a ''domus'' could be quite large even if it wasn't the Emperor's residence. Remember, the (ludicrously grand) core of Buckingham Palace was built as Buckingham ''House'' by the Dukes of Buckingham before being sold to the Crown, and nobody thought the duke was trying to undersell the grandeur of the place.[[/note]] If Suetonius is to be believed, the entrance hall alone was a mile long and had a 120-foot statue of Nero as a solar deity; there was a huge artificial lake, gardens and woods rife with plants and animals, petal- and perfume-sprinklers and a banqueting hall with a constantly revolving roof, and gold, jeweled and ivory decorations throughout. When it was finished, Nero is supposed to have said, "Good - now at last I can begin to live like a human being." No wonder people accused him of starting the fire (though most scholars believe that [[NotMeThisTime he probably didn't]]). As Nero was less than popular with the Roman establishment by the time he died and the palace was a gigantic reminder of him, most of it was later demolished. Of course, Nero's profound unpopularity means that this description should be taken with a large grain of salt. That said, some elements are definitely true. Nero's giant statue, for example, survived the destruction of the palace, and later on the Flavian Amphitheatre was nicknamed Colosseum (yes, that one) because it stood next to the place and dwarfed the statue. The banquet hall with revolving floor--long thought to be one of the things the "historians" made up about the palace, and one of the more ludicrous ones at that--has actually been found in an archeological dig, since it was simply buried instead of being wrecked, and it's considered a marvel of engineering.

* Russia is peppered with old crumbling manor houses, estates and mansions dating back to the Imperial era. Most of them were re-used as resorts during the Soviet era, which added a couple of decades to their longevity. Right now, most of them are pictureque ruins.
** ''UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia'' era added quite a lot to the amount of mansions in the country. There is a joke: "If you are in backwater Russia, follow the smoothest road to find the governor's mansion".

* Averted with Creator/GeorgeLucas and his Skywalker Ranch. George built it as a self-contained movie ranch and while he has his offices there, it is not his residence. Unfortunately, while he built it provide facilities to struggling independent film makers, it is too remote and fancy for most artists of that level to use it that much, although some have like Creator/KevinSmith.

* When WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic wanders around his huge house (both of them, Doug and Rob moved into their own home during ''Film/TheRoom2003'' review), you get an awful lot of SceneryPorn.
* Mutterwald in the ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'', the massive mansion on the huge estate where the Goodkinds live. It used to be Phase's home, right up until chapter 2 of "Ayla and the Late Trevor James Goodkind."
* Brown Manor in ''The Molly and Pippin Show'' is a large mansion which is basically a cross between Neuschwanstein, the Taj Mahal and The Biltmore Estate.

* ''WebVideo/TheVictorianWay'': Mrs Crocombe works at the estate of Lord and Lady Braybrooke called Audley End House in England. It's massive, exquisite and positively gorgeous with vast gardens (with both ornamental plants and useful plants for the kitchen). Mrs Crocombe is proud that she has such a good and prestigious job.

* Bleacher Report's ''[[WebAnimation/TheChampions2018 The Champions]]'' features the teams of the [[UsefulNotes/EuroFooty UEFA Champions League]] in a mansion large enough to fit ''32 soccer teams'' (players, managers, and occasionally others), which boasts a full size pitch, a pool shaped like the Champions League trophy, a large garden, and exquisite decoration.
* On the ''WebVideo/DreamSMP'', Punz's house features a glass roof and many beehives for beekeeping, while his massive backyard has a tower with floors rented out to various members on the server. The property is so large that it's even bigger than the territory L'Manburg — a whole ''city-state'' — used to occupy.

* The Lodge Estate from ComicBook/ArchieComics, home of the super-rich Veronica Lodge and her family that's also the biggest house in Riverdale.
* Rich Manor in ''ComicBook/RichieRich''. In one cartoon, the father used LONG distance to call eastern part of house from INSIDE the same house...

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': South Haven, where Sunny South grew up, is an old southern mansion with enough rooms to house a family reunion and a bunch of the Holliday Girls at once without people tripping over each other. It's implied history as a plantation house and the gators present in the waters give the place a eerie feeling however, even before the murders start.
* The X-Mansion where the Franchise/XMen are based. Although more interesting that the fancy manor is the ElaborateUndergroundBase underneath it, featuring advanced labs, an [[DeadlyTrainingArea advanced holodeck]], a complex machine that telepaths can use to locate mutants...

* * ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': [[Characters/RickAndMortyEvilMorty Evil Morty's]] space station is less of a villain lair and more of a vacation home as shown in episode "[[Recap/RickAndMortyS7E5Unmortricken Unmortricken]]". It consists of a large mansion built on a lush grassy yard complete with swimming pool and robot butlers. The space station is attached to the side of the Central Finite Curve for stability and ease of access, while there's a powerful barrier keeping the chaos of the void out that can have an idyllic landscape projected on it.

* ''YOYO MAN'': Xiao Guang is shown to live in one. Funnily enough, his friends at first assume that the small wooden shed right across from the mansion is actually his house.

* BigFancyHouse/WesternAnimation

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/{{Rebecca}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rebecca_fancy_house1.png]]]]

* The Titular ''Two Story House'' in the Music/GeorgeJones/Tammy Wynette song about a couple that buys one and then finds their marriage falling apart.

* When WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic wanders around his huge house (both of them, Doug and Rob moved into their own home during ''Film/TheRoom'' review), you get an awful lot of SceneryPorn.

* On the ''LetsPlay/DreamSMP'', Punz's house features a glass roof and many beehives for beekeeping, while his massive backyard has a tower with floors rented out to various members on the server. As a matter of fact, the property is so large that it's even bigger than the territory L'Manburg — a whole ''country'' — used to occupy.

* Edna Mode's mansion in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' is a massive mansion on a massive property, with plenty of space inside for both normal rooms such as the kitchen as well as for designing and testing supersuits.

* After the Great Fire of [[AncientRome Rome]] in 64, the emperor Nero ordered the construction of a gigantic new palace, the ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_Aurea Domus Aurea]]'' ("Golden House").[[note]]The name "house" was not an attempt at modesty; "''domus''" was specifically the Latin word for a rich family's townhouse, at least as applied to structures in Rome; a ''domus'' could be quite large even if it wasn't the Emperor's residence. Remember, the (ludicrously grand) core of Buckingham Palace was built as Buckingham ''House'' by the Dukes of Buckingham before being sold to the Crown, and nobody thought the duke was trying to undersell the grandeur of the place.[[/note]] If Suetonius is to be believed, the entrance hall alone was a mile long and had a 120-foot statue of Nero as a solar deity; there was a huge artificial lake, gardens and woods rife with plants and animals, petal- and perfume-sprinklers and a banqueting hall with a constantly revolving roof, and gold, jeweled and ivory decorations throughout. When it was finished, Nero is supposed to have said, "Good - now at last I can begin to live like a human being." No wonder people accused him of starting the fire (though most scholars believe that [[NotMeThisTime he probably didn't]]). As Nero was less than popular with the Roman establishment by the time he died and the palace was a gigantic reminder of him, most of it was later demolished. Of course, Nero's profound unpopularity means that this description should be taken with a large grain of salt. That said, some elements are definitely true. Nero's giant statue, for example, survived the destruction of the palace, and later on the Flavian Amphitheatre was nicknamed Colosseum (yes, that one) because it stood next to the place and dwarfed the statue. The banquet hall with revolving floor has actually been found in an archeological dig, since it was simply buried instead of being wrecked, and it's considered a marvel of engineering.

* Proving this is all relative, the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' of Creator/AAPessimal has the Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons family. Career Wizard Ponder Stibbons is Vice-Chancellor of Unseen University. He has a salary for this post, plus getting on for thirty lesser academic positions, all of which attract small stipends. If he had to live on any one of those small sums on its own, he'd be in trouble. But getting on for thirty of them puts him on a wage which is not insignificant. He has married a career Assassin who has a few contract completions behind her, as well as independent investment income of her own. She believes a young professional couple need the best house possible to bring up a family in. They move into the Nap Hill district, acquiring a large detached house with a good-sized garden. Their oldest daughter only realises she is privileged and well off when she brings schoolfriends home. her friend [[FightingIrish Shauna]] cannot beleive a girl of her age has such a big bedroom and she ''gets it all to herself, and is not expected to share a space a quarter of the size with three of her sisters''. Bekki realises the home she has been brought up in, which she has seen as perfectly ordinary and everyday, is atypical by Ankh-Morporkian standards and for somebody from a terrace in Dimwell, it's a great big rambling palace. And Bekki's mother points out that there are ''still'' more upmarket suburbs like Scoone Avenue and King's Way, where their Nap Hill home would easily fit inside the garden shed.

* Bill Gates, founder and CEO of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft Microsoft]], lives in a mansion that is 66,000 square feet long. The mansion has many luxuries including an underwater sound system, a private movie theater, and a high-tech system. There is even a reception hall that can hold a total of 200 guests.

* Bill Gates, founder and CEO of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft Microsoft]], lives in a mansion that is 66,000 square feet long. The mansion has many luxuries including an underwater sound system, a private movie theater, and gym with a 20 foot trampoline. There is even a reception hall that can hold a total of 200 guests.

* Bill Gates, founder and CEO of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft Microsoft]], lives in a mansion that is 66,000 square feet long.

* Bill Gates, founder and CEO of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft]], lives in a mansion that is 66,000 square feet long.

* Bill Gates, founder and CEO of Microsoft, lives in a mansion that is 66,000 square feet long.

* Wayne Manor from ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' is a multi-level sprawling historical estate where there was never any concern about finding bedrooms for his many children (prior to Flashpoint his kids included [[ComicBook/{{Nightwing}} Dick]], [[Comicbook/RedHoodTheLostDays Jason]], [[ComicBook/RobinSeries Tim]], [[ComicBook/Batgirl2000 Cassandra]] and Damian), at least two kitchens, a ballroom, an extensive library, a conservatory and numerous outbuildings, such as the old carriage building which was converted into a guest house. Of course, that's says nothing of [[ElaborateUndergroundBase what's underneath it]]...

[[folder:Fanfiction]]