Hearst Castle - The Roman Pool

When you first glimpse the Roman Pool you don't know what you're seeing. You just see tennis courts because that's all you expect to see. Only with closer examination and a tip off from the tour guide did I notice the glass bricks under the nets. These are the skylight for the Roman Pool below.


This fabulous indoor pool is the last stop on every one of the five tours and it's very easy to see why. It's the perfect exemplar of the Hearst ranch. It is larger than life and completely over the top and utterly arresting. This was the moment on the tour when I most wanted to stray from the paths. I really, really wanted to swim in this pool, more than I ever wanted to swim in Scrooge McDuck's pool of money.

The water is 10 feet deep in the main pool. That was a little too intimidating for most of Mr Hearst's guests, so they generally paddled around in the shallow alcove behind the diving platform and left the deep water to the strong swimmers.

I didn't have the opportunity to stand on the diving platform, but I'm sure it would be the best place from which to appreciate this room.

Fish and seaweed pattern the ceiling.

Diving into the depths of the pool would take you to the suns and stars on the bottom. The Roman Pool is the world literally turned upside down. Swimming in that still, dark water would be like swimming in an alternate world, a world of elegance and beauty and lots of lots of money. The Roman Pool is the world of William Randolph Hearst and our tour ended with this last glimpse of a lifestyle that we can gaze into from the tour carpet, but never truly touch.

Perhaps to comfort us in that sudden realisation, the Roman Pool is the one place where we were free of the sad grey tour carpet. In this room alone we had our chance to walk where Mr Hearst himself walked, on the same gold plated tiles from which he had surveyed his legacy. That's my grubby shoe, walking on gold.

Thank you to all the good people of Hearst Castle and especially to Russ, who has something of the same poetic soul as Miss Julia Morgan and Mr William Randolph Hearst.