'Castle Von D' goes on sale in Girona: The medieval castle that tattoo artist Kat Von D secretly restored

In April 2022, Kat Von D confessed to The Sunday Times that she had been restoring "an abandoned castle outside Barcelona, an hour from Girona" for some time. She gave no further details. Now, a 17th-century farmhouse with a tower in Cruïlles, Baix Empordà, has come onto the market for 1.95 million euros through the real estate agency Cottage Properties—and everything suggests it is the same property the tattoo artist nicknamed "Castle Von D" on Instagram.

The connection is not an assumption. In March 2018, Von D posted a video of the castle in the midst of renovation on her Instagram account. In another video she wrote: "View from the castle bathroom towards the natural pool and acres of protected forest." The description matches this estate, which spans 350,000 square meters of land, including protected forest, with an infinity pool and panoramic views of the Gavarres mountains. In the same album of posts, Von D tagged the images with the hashtag #castlevond.

Mas Betràn: 17th-century farmhouse converted into a Gothic fortress

The property, called Mas Bertràn and renovated in 2010, combines the original structure of a 17th-century Catalan farmhouse with an interior intervention of a markedly Gothic character. The exterior already sets the tone: irregular stone walls, a cylindrical tower with a conical tiled roof, pointed arched windows with mullions—possibly original—and a striking burgundy red entrance door.

The interior is where Von D's touch is most evident. The kitchen is its most unique element: pointed arch windows with colored glass rosettes, veined black marble countertops, an extractor hood designed as a golden Gothic altarpiece, and an intense red La Cornue oven. The resemblance to the kitchen of her Victorian mansion in Los Angeles—which Von D renovated with Gothic arches, carved wood, and a candle chandelier—is immediate.

The blood-red tiled floors that Von D showed in one of her 2018 Instagram videos are another nod to her characteristic aesthetic. In her Los Angeles mansion, a secret door with a hand-carved wall gave access to a pool of the same color, which became the most photographed element of the property when it went on the market in 2022.

The proven value of her taste

Von D's real estate trajectory has a relevant precedent. Her Victorian mansion in Windsor Square, Los Angeles—built in 1896 and restored by her with the same Gothic vocabulary—went on the market in January 2022 for $15 million. After more than a year on the market, it finally sold for $7.75 million. The operation demonstrated that her intervention adds character that is difficult to quantify, even if the market ultimately adjusted the price.

The Cruïlles farmhouse, at 1.95 million euros, represents a very different scale: 670 square meters built distributed over two floors, plus service areas, on a 35-hectare plot. To contextualize the figure, the average price per square meter in Baix Empordà is between 2,500 and 3,500 euros. At that market price, the 670 square meters of this estate would be worth between 1.67 and 2.35 million—not counting the land, the tower, or the design intervention.

A location in the heart of the inland Costa Brava

Cruïlles belongs to the municipality of Cruïlles, Monells i Sant Sadurní de l'Heura, in Baix Empordà, about 35 kilometers from Girona and less than 20 from Palafrugell and the Costa Brava beaches. The estate is located in Els Àngels, an elevated enclave with views of the Gavarres massif, a protected natural park. Púbol is a few minutes away, where Salvador Dalí restored the castle he gifted to Gala and which today forms part of the Dalí triangle.

The property is categorized for residential, hotel, and rural tourism uses, and features radiant floor heating, hand-carved double-glazed wooden windows, and a machine room with high-end technical equipment. The infinity pool with Gavarres views and the large outdoor terraces complete an estate that, with or without the Von D name, is difficult to classify.

Cottage Properties, the agency specializing in farmhouses and rustic properties based in Navata, Girona, manages the sale.

Images

Images of the property are available through the property listing on the Cottage Properties website. Kat Von D's original videos can be viewed on her Instagram profile (@thekatvond), posted on March 10, 2018.

The property images are reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) and must be attributed to Cottage Properties with a link to the official property listing on cottageproperties.es.