These Are the 11 Biggest Houses in the World According to Architectural Digest

They come from all over the world and if you’re thinking the White House or Hearst Castle, you’re thinking small.

We’re not quite sure how they figured it out, but famed design magazine Architectural Digest recently came up with its list of the largest homes in the world and while America has always been considered the land of excess only one of the 11 is in the U.S.

Builders in this country looking for inspiration for their next big project will need to head out to Asia, South America and the Middle East to check out these giants, several of which run in the millions of square feet. Many are private homes, a few are open to tours and they’ve been built as far back as the 15^th century and as recently as just a few years ago. But what they all have in common is a size and scale beyond most of our comprehension. Counting down, here they are:

11. Safra Mansion in São Paulo, Brazil, measures 117,000 square feet and is one of the newest homes, built in the 1990s. It has 130 rooms.

10. Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, is the only domestic property and with 35 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms over its 175,000 square feet, it was big enough for the Vanderbilts.

9. Antilia in Mumbai, India, is 27 stories tall and cost $2 billion to build by the time it was finished in 2010. It comes in at 400,000 square feet.

8. Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France, might have been your guess for the largest house but at a mere 721,200 square feet, it is down the list. It does have 6,000 pieces of art however.

7. Buckingham Palace in London, England, would have been another good guess with 775 rooms spread out over 828,000 square feet, but it too doesn’t measure up.

6. Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, India, is now mostly a hotel but when it was built in the first part of the 20^th century, Maharaja Umaid Singh called its one million square feet home.

5. Quirinal Palace in Rome, Italy, was built as the summer residence of the pope in 1853 but its 1.2 million square feet are now one of three residences for the president of Italy.

4. Apostolic Palace in Vatican City is not just the home of the current pope, but its 1.7 million square feet also houses the Sistine Chapel and some of the most famous art in the world.

3. Istana Nurul Iman in Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei is where the Sultan of Brunei and his family live, making do with 1,788 rooms spread out over 2.2 million square feet. It was completed in 1984 and its name translates to “Palace of the Light of Faith.”

2. Ak Saray in Ankara, Turkey, the presidential palace in the country, is the newest home on the list having been built in 2014. Its 3.1 million square feet cost a reported $615 million to build.

1. Lakshmi Vilas Palace in Gujarat, India, at an incredible 30.5 million square feet, is almost as large as the rest of the list put together. It was built in 1890 and has a mere 170 rooms. The royal Vadodara family still lives there but parts of the house are open to public touring. Bring a map.

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