Celebrity homes as tourist destinations are not new. Global aggregator Airbnb even has a new category called ‘Icons’ where it offers celebrity homes as homestays. Here are houses of some famous people that are open to the public.
RK Narayan’s house in Mysore
In 2016, the government of India converted author RK Narayan’s house in Karnataka’s Mysore into a museum. Narayan’s double-storey home in Yadavagiri has a collection of his works and several personal items on display. Known for the warm, evocative nostalgia in his classics such as Malgudi Days and his compassionate humanism, celebrating the ‘ordinary’ in his books and short stories, his Mysore house resonates with this simplicity. The white washed house built in 1952 is airy, sun-lit and spacious with red cemented floor, and is now maintained by Mysore City Corporation. The ground floor has a verandah and living room. The walls are lined with snapshots from his life and adorned with awards such as Padma Vibhushan.
Jamini Roy’s house in Kolkata
One of the most prolific painters of India, Jamini Roy’s house in Kolkata’s Ballygunge Place became the country’s first private artist museum last year. Located in a quiet leafy lane of Kolkata, his house used to be a convergence of creative minds as ‘adda’ who would come to visit Roy. Roy’s home was a place where he not only operated his studio but was also open to the public who wanted to view his work. In one documentary based on him, Jamini Roy: Portrait of a Painter, he is even seen painting his Christ series sitting in his garden. Roy is known for minimalist style of painting who ushered in the era of modernism and channelised his art through Bengali folk heritage having created 20,000 paintings in his illustrious five-decade career. After his death in 1972, his descendants continued to live in the building until it was acquired by DAG (previously known as Delhi Art Gallery) last year to convert the place into a private museum showcasing his life and work.
Jane Austen’s house in Hampshire
Best known for several of her novels including Pride and Prejudice (1813), English novelist Jane Austen’s cottage in Hampshire was her home and the birthplace of her six beloved novels. Her novels became popular worldwide posthumously and still resonate with contemporary readers. While she was born in 1775 in the United Kingdom’s Stevenson, her cottage in Hampshire’s Chawton was where she spent the last eight years of her life and published six of her novels. Her house is built in Victorian style where she used to live with her sister Cassandra. It still has several of her belongings. Jane Austen’s House Museum, established in 1947, was opened to the public in July 1949. It sees over 40,000 visitors every year.
Frida Kahlo’s house in Mexico
Famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s house, known as ‘Blue House’ or ‘La Casa Azul’, remains intact in the same manner as it was when she died. She was known for portraits, self portraits, and work that was influenced by Mexican artifacts and nature in a folk art style on identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society with autobiographical elements, mixed realism and fantasy. She got married to fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera which she had described as one of two major accidents defining her life — a bus crash that left her shattered and bedridden for a year and marrying Rivera. Her house represents Kahlo’s life and passions with portraits of her heroes Lenin and Mao hanging over the bed, her clothes in the wardrobe, wheelchair by an unfinished portrait of Stalin and ashes in an urn on display.
Ernest Hemingway’s house in Florida
Best known for his short novel, The Old Man And The Sea, American novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway’ house in the United States’ Florida is a visitor’s delight. Constructed in Spanish colonial style of architecture in 1851, it served as Hemingway’s home with his wife Pauline Pfeiffer for nine years from 1931 to 1940. His writing studio can be found inside the house where he produced the best of his literary works, including the non fiction Green Hills of Africa (1935), the 1936 short stories The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, and novels To Have and Have Not (1937) and Islands in the Stream (1970). It was converted into a private museum in 1964.