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Since the announcement of Bill and Melinda Gates’ divorce, many people are wondering who Bill’s next girlfriend will be (in fact, they’re taking bets), while others ponder who will get their ginormous lakefront house on Lake Washington, Seattle.

Like all great mansions, it has its own name: Xanadu 2.0, which is derived from Charles Foster Kane’s fictional home from Citizen Kane – and is valued at somewhere upwards of $130 million (around R1,85 billion).

The 66 000 square-foot complex was designed by the architects that also designed Steve Jobs’ house.

While we’re name dropping, they have another mega-rich person in the neighbourhood: Jeff Bezos.

Per The New York Times, the details of the home have always been shrouded in mystery:

The details of the waterfront compound have been kept incredibly private by the Gates family — so much so that a tour of the property went for $35,000 at a charity auction in 2009, according to TechCrunch.

The Gateses own multiple other parcels of land surrounding the main property, according to public records, so walking by to catch a glimpse is out of the question.

But the media reports and visitors’ accounts have been piling up, which when combined, can give us a pretty good picture of what the house looks like.

As you can imagine, the house comes magnificently EQUIPPED.

First, it is built out of orangey Douglas fir wood and the sand on the beach is imported from Hawaii.

Then there’s a 20-car garage built into the hillside, according to a 1995 New York Times article.

It has a spa, a 60-foot pool with its own underwater music system, a gym panelled with stone from a mountain peak in the Pacific Northwest, a trampoline room, and a stream for salmon, trout, and other fish.

There’s an art-deco movie theatre, too, and each room has touchpad-controlled lighting, music, and climate controls.

The one weird part is the confusing bedroom-to-bathroom ratio, with seven bedrooms unmatched to 24 bathrooms. 24!

I’m hyperventilating at this excess.

I guess Ms Gates is with me on that one, as she once said that the mansion caused her to have a “mini sort of personal crisis”.

The mansion was built before their marriage, anyway:

…“a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare,” according to a 2008 profile of Ms Gates in Fortune magazine, with “enough software and high-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game.”

Well, that likely settles that, as she probably isn’t so keen to get the house after the divorce anyway.

All yours, Bill – you can enjoy it as the bachelor it was built for in the first place.

[sources:cnn&nytimes&archute]