Disney’s animated movies are full of famous castles, some of which have become real-life attractions: Sleeping Beauty Castle can be found at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, while Cinderella Castle is located at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. Recently, a new castle was added with the opening of Beast’s impressive castle in Disney World’s New Fantasyland. As real estate enthusiasts at Movoto Real Estate, this made me curious about the potential value of Beast’s castle in the real world.
The castle is nearly a character in Disney’s 1991 film, transitioning from an idyllic French chateau to a dark, moody space when the Beast was cursed. But even this cursed, foreboding castle has a lot of appeal—including a household staff who have been transformed into clocks, candelabras, and even tea kettles that talk, sing, and dance. So if a singing tea service is high on your list of housing needs, this cursed castle is definitely for you.
The castle is perched on a rocky hillside above a waterfall, surrounded by a verdant—also possibly cursed—forest. But, while there’s a lot of the castle in the film, it’s tricky to pin down its exact value—especially since versions of the castle in the movie, in later Disney artwork, and at Disney World are all slightly different. However, after doing a lot of tough research involving staring closely at still movie screens and browsing castles for sale—it’s a hard job—I pinned the price down to the princely sum of $80,190,800.
That is if it were real and Belle and her Beast were interested in selling it on today’s market.
So just how did I come up with this value?
Putting a Price to a Fairy Tale Castle
Factoring in the damage a curse could do to real estate value is tricky, so we stuck to our basic fictional formula, which means we needed to know:
- The size of Beast’s castle
- The location of the castle if it were in our world
- The price per square foot of similar properties in the same location
Let’s start by talking size.
Just How Big of a Castle Does One Beast Need?
This castle on a hill would surely satisfy any prince—or princess. It towers over the surrounding landscape and its exterior dimensions—which can be judged by the visible windows and doors—are immense. It doesn’t scale down when you step inside, either: the rooms dwarf the size of the characters that inhabit them. Only a few rooms are shown in the film: the entrance hall with its grand staircases, a huge library for bookworm Belle, two dining rooms, and a massive ballroom—though the castle’s exterior size hints at a lot more. Fortunately, I have a cheat sheet: a sketch of the castle’s floor plan that was included as an extra with the movie’s home release.
Though the floor plan is a good guide, for it to be useful I needed to figure out a scale. To do this, I looked at scenes where individuals first entered the castle, where floor tiles in the entrance hall make a useful ruler. When Belle’s father, Maurice, is in the entrance hall, you can see that his shoulder width is about the width of one of those tiles. Taking the average width of a man’s shoulders (18.25 inches), I can say that each tile measures at about 18.25 inches. This means the entry hall, at 17 tiles across, measures just under 26 feet wide.
Applying that measurement to the floor plan nets 17,980 square feet for the main floor. Going back to the castle’s exterior, windows show that there are clearly at least five floors—though some of the castle’s towers go higher and some don’t go that high, 5 seems like a reasonable estimate based on what I can see of the castle. So taking the square feet per floor and multiplying it by 5 floors tells me that the Beast’s castle is approximately 89,900 square feet.
All I can think is that’s a lot of square feet to keep clean—especially in a castle inhabited by a literal beast. Hopefully some of those brooms from “Fantasia” are hanging around to keep the place tidy—otherwise poor Belle would have her work cut out for her.
Finding a Home for a Fictional Castle
Picking a location for this castle is actually fairly simple: the film places itself in France, in a wooded region it calls the Black Forest. I know that Disney’s designers modeled their castle on the Chateau de Chambord in France’s Loire Valley—though the castles aren’t identical, you can see how this real-world castle’s multitude of towers inspired Beast’s many-towered castle.
This fertile river valley is full of vineyards and forests—and was a popular spot for French royalty, so the area is filled with the elegant chateaux of kings and nobility. This makes it a perfect spot to place Beast’s castle—though the neighbors probably wouldn’t approve of a beast living next door. On the plus side, maybe this is why the castle is up for sale, giving us a chance to pick up a fairy tale castle for our own.
Pricing Up the Competition
I scoured real estate listings for properties that could compare to this beastly castle—and though there was nothing quite the same scale, there are many chateaux for sale in the Loire Valley region that are centuries old and easily match in elegance for our castle. I priced several properties that were in prime condition—no one wants to buy a castle that’s a fixer upper—that ranged from 8,600 square feet to 33,000 square feet. Averaging the cost per square foot of these properties gave me a value of $892 per square foot.
Applying this cost to the 89,900 square foot estimate for the castle gives a price of $80,190,800—cost of curse removal and household staff not included. So if you’re in the market for a fairy tale castle, we hope you have deep pockets… and are prepared to pay extra to clear the castle of that pesky curse before you decide to move in.