Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, resides with his family in a 66,000-square-foot mansion on the border of Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. The home’s moniker is Xanadu 2.0, a reference to the estate of the main character in the film Citizen Kane.

The home was designed by James Cutler Architects and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in the “Pacific Lodge” style.

The property is an earth-sheltered home constructed into the side of a hill using Douglas fir timbers, a stainless steel roof and a concrete foundation with steel reinforcements that are several times stronger than the minimums required by the local building code to prevent earthquake damage.

Unsurprisingly, the compound is heavily dependent on advanced technology. Everyone wears a pin containing a special chip that, upon entering a room, automatically adjusts the temperature, audio, and lighting to their liking.

The majority of the structure is buried into the hillside to ensure privacy, but windows on the lakefront side of the home offer views of the lake and Seattle to the west.

The mansion contains a grand staircase, a family wing, a guest wing, a theatre, exercise facilities and a pool structure with a 17-by-60-foot swimming pool equipped with an underwater music system.

A panelled 2,100-square-foot library with a domed reading room is one of the property’s most intriguing features. The inscription at the base of the cupola is the last line of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It reads, “He had travelled a great distance to reach this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could scarcely have failed to grasp it.”