As you leave the windswept crest of Big Sur, one is invariably surprised to stumble across this extravagant castle overlooking the Pacific, which embodies the contrasts and paradoxes of California. Without a care for financial or technical considerations, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst hired architect Julia Morgan, who had acquired reinforced concrete know-how in Paris, to build this lavishly embellished palatial estate and house from 1919 to 1947.