House of the Day: Miami's Real-Life Castle, With Moat

Like any aspiring young princess, I'd always dreamed of living in a fairytale castle -- turrets, buttresses, moat and the whole shebang. Over two decades later, I'm still no princess, but I've found a real-life castle that looks like it was plucked straight from my childhood dreams.

The newly-listed, $10.9 million Chateau Artisan in Miami, Fla., sits in the middle of its own private lake that boasts a moat and bridge. Designed by celebrated Miami-based architect Charles Siegel of Sieger Suarez, the behemoth of a home was built completely symmetrically, from its diamond-shaped courtyard to its matching concrete gazebos and its twin fountains and paired royal gardens (see below right).

It's been called everything from a "magnificent castle manse, serving as a lesson in dynamic lines and flawless symmetry" to a "hulking 10,124 square feet of fantastic and possibly questionable taste," but I give it a huge thumbs up. Chateau Artisan is the closest thing to a real-life American castle that you could possibly get. And come on, it has a moat.

The Chateau also boasts mammoth, black, wrought-iron privacy gates, and is accessible by a long, tree-lined driveway with an enormous obelisk focal point in the middle. If you want a taste of what it would feel like to drive up to this ridiculously swank home via said tree-lined drive, watch the first 26 seconds of the "Fire Flame" music video by rapper Birdman, who featured the Chateau prominently throughout.

Chateau Artisan also features eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a swimming pool, a boat house, a huge koi pond, vast lawns, countless fountains and a maze.

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Judy and Nathan Zeder have the listing.

Click on the images below to see more homes in the Miami area.

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