Madonna Inn
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The Madonna Inn is a motel of flamboyant style in San Luis Obispo, California. Opened for business since 1958, the motel was the creation of Alex Madonna, who died in April 2004. The motel is a monument of unremitting kitsch, with a Swiss-Alp exterior and pink lavished common rooms. Each room in the Madonna Inn are uniquely designed and themed. Its rock waterfall urinal is a fixture along California's Central Coast and many tourists come to visit, to the embarassement of males who genuinely need to use the facilities.
In 1966, the motel 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 present rooms as they are known today had been rebuild in all is luridness.
In the 1970s, the Inn became to incarnate all the most grotesque aspects of pro-development for the environmentalists.
Back in 1982, the Madonna Inn was already world-renowned and the New York Times interviewed 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."
The Inn was immortalized in high literary style by 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."
Madonna made sure to cater to all ranges of tastes and included rooms suchs as the Yahoo, Love Nest, Vouz, 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.