<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Historic Houses: The Splendors of Highclere Castle\nAD revisits the Earl of Carnarvon's estate in Hampshire&amp;amp;mdash;now the setting of PBS's hit show Downton Abbey\nA pair of canephorae decorate the gateposts of Highclere Castle, in Hampshire, and suggest the dark splendor of treasures within. Home of the earls of Carnarvon, and built during the last century in fashionable Gothic Revival style, the castle was passed down to the present earl 55 years ago, when he was a very young man.\nPointed arches, decorated with small marble columns, give the entrance hall a feeling of mysterious beauty. An ornate Sarabend rug, placed on a geometric parquet marble floor, produces a richly complex pattern.\nThe living room is seen through a series of arches, and is open to the grandly proportioned central space. Griffons depicted on the iron fireplace flank a Jacobean needlepoint screen, while a portrait of the present earl of Carnarvon, at right, is casually displayed next to a Toledo chinoiserie screen.\nVan Dyck's monumental equestrian portrait of King Charles I dominates the dining room; other 17th-century portraits are predominantly English. The table is scaled for intimacy; appointed with Hepplewhite chairs, it rests on a Caucasian rug.\nTall gilded columns serve to divide the long axis of the library. The rich tones of the coffered wood ceiling and Caucasian rugs give the room a warm Victorian feeling. On the far wall, a massive double-pediment bookcase is filled with old books, their fine leather bindings creating an additional pattern.\nExotic forms of griffons decorate a Regency armchair that attends a Regency mahogany and bronze writing desk. A Louis XVI bronze and ormolu candelabrum on a pedestal illuminates antique volumes in a parcel-gilt walnut bookcase.\nRomantic and serene, Heaven's Gate is a 19th-century folly built atop a grassy mound in the castle's extensive private parklands."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/highclere-castle-downton-abbey-slideshow>