The Madonna Inn is a motel of flamboyant style in San Luis Obispo, California. Opened for business in 1958, the motel was the creation of Alex Madonna, who died in April 2004, and his wife Phyllis. The motel is a monument of unremitting kitsch, a Swiss-Alp exterior, and lavish pink common rooms. Each room in the Madonna Inn is uniquely designed and themed. Its rock waterfall urinal is a fixture along California's Central Coast. Many tourists come to visit the urinal, to the embarrassment of males who genuinely need to use the facilities.

History

In 1966, the Inn's original units were burned to the ground in a dramatic fire. It was reopened a year later, and by the end of the decade, all of the rooms had been rebuilt in all their luridness as they are known today. There are 109 rooms.

In the 1970s, the Inn came to represent all the most grotesque aspects of development for the environmentalists.

Back in 1982, the Madonna Inn was already world-renowned and the New York Times interviewed Alex Madonna about his eponymous creation. "Anybody can build one room and a thousand like it," he defended with pride. "I want people to come in with a smile and leave with a smile. It's fun. What fun do you think Paul Getty got out of his life."

Room names

Madonna made sure to cater to all ranges of tastes and included rooms with such unusual names as the Yahoo, Love Nest, the sets Ren, Dez, and Vous and Merry, Go, Round, Old Mill, Kona Rock, Irish Hills, Cloud Nine, Just Heaven, Hearts & Flowers, Rock Bottom, Austrian Suite, Cabin Still, Old World Suite, Caveman Room, Elegance, Daisy Mae, Safari Room, Highway Suite, Jungle Rock, American Home, Bridal Falls and the Carin.

Popular culture

The Inn is featured in Umberto Eco's book Travels in Hyperreality (1991). According to Eco, "the poor words with which natural human speech is provided, cannot suffice to describe the Madonna Inn...Let's say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli."

It is also featured in the film Aria (1987), in a segment titled "Rigoletto" from director Julien Temple. It starred Buck Henry, Beverly D'Angelo, Anita Morris, and an Elvis Impersonator with music from Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.

External links

• Madonna Inn

Hotels in California | San Luis Obispo County, California | 1958 establishments | Novelty architecture