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Inside a $195 Million Bel Air Estate With Secret Tunnels

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Bel Air’s most storied estate just carried the highest price tag in America.

Architectural Digest’s “On the Market” series pulls up to Chartwell, the 10.4-acre compound built into the hills above Bel Air and listed at $195 million. This isn’t a glossy new spec build — it’s a 1935 French neoclassical chateau with a Hollywood pedigree, a five-year renovation history, and a subterranean network that reportedly once doubled as Luciano Pavarotti’s private rehearsal hall.

• Chartwell was listed at $195 million, represented by Drew Gitlin and Susan Gitlin of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties alongside Gary Gold of Hilton & Hyland.
• The estate belonged to late Univision chairman Jerry Perenchio, who bought it in 1986 and spent five years and multiple millions renovating it before his death in 2017.
• The 25,000-square-foot main house, designed by architect Sumner Spaulding and completed in 1935, served as the exterior of the Clampett mansion in “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

A Chateau With a Hollywood Résumé

Chartwell’s main residence runs 11 bedrooms and 18 bathrooms across 25,000 square feet, but its cultural footprint predates most of the neighborhood’s current trophy homes. Sumner Spaulding’s 1935 design became instantly recognizable decades later as the establishing shot of the Clampett estate on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” giving the property a pop-culture identity long before Perenchio ever bought it.

That name recognition only grew once Perenchio took ownership in 1986. He spent five years and a multi-million-dollar budget reworking the house and quietly assembling neighboring parcels to expand the grounds to their current 10.39-to-10.4 acres — the kind of patient, land-by-land accumulation that’s rare even among Bel Air’s biggest holdings.

The Guest House, the Pool, and the 40-Car Motor Court

Beyond the main chateau, Chartwell’s guest house carries its own architectural weight: five bedrooms designed by Wallace Neff, one of Southern California’s defining Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean-style architects. The grounds also hold a tennis court, a pool house, an 85-foot swimming pool (listed elsewhere as 75 feet), and a wine cellar built to hold 12,000 bottles at controlled temperature.

The property’s motor court sits underground and holds 40 vehicles, a scale that puts Chartwell in line with other Bel Air megamansions built for serious car collections — the kind of amenity you’d also find at Beverly Hills’ $65 million ultra-modern mega mansions. Chartwell adds an imported grove of Northern California redwoods, giving the estate a canopy that most new Bel Air construction simply can’t replicate.

The Tunnels Underneath

Chartwell’s signature feature isn’t square footage — it’s what runs beneath it. An elevator drops from the main residence into a network of underground tunnels dating to the original 1935 construction. According to the estate’s lore, Pavarotti, a frequent guest, used one of the passageways to rehearse because of its acoustics.

One tunnel leads straight out to the pool. Another opens through a carved stone face into private gardens, grottos, and koi ponds.

That second passage is the estate’s theatrical centerpiece — guests emerge from underground through a sculpted stone facade into a hidden garden complex most visitors to the main house would never know existed.

Luxury Bel Air Property Market Analysis

At $195 million, Chartwell was priced at the top tier of the Los Angeles market alongside other trophy listings that have made headlines for their scale rather than their history, including sprawling waterpark-equipped compounds like the backyard-waterpark mansions that have become common currency among new-money buyers. Chartwell’s pitch is different: it’s selling provenance — a Perenchio-era renovation, a Sumner Spaulding pedigree, and a piece of “Beverly Hillbillies” iconography that no amount of new construction can manufacture.

Gitlin, Gitlin, and Gold built the listing around that split appeal — old Hollywood history paired with modern infrastructure like the 40-car subterranean court and the wine cellar. It’s the same tension that runs through most of Bel Air’s current inventory, where buyers are choosing between brand-new spec mansions and legacy estates that come with a story already attached.