Inside Antilia: Nita Ambani Finally Opens the Doors

For years, Mumbai's most famous building was also its most mysterious. Antilia — Mukesh Ambani's 27-storey residence, described as one of the most expensive private homes in the world — had fascinated the public precisely because the family kept its doors closed. In 2012, Nita Ambani finally opened them, giving Vanity Fair its first inside look for the magazine's June issue.

The interview settled the rumor that had dogged the building: contrary to reports that the family had never moved in — including a New York Times report in October 2011 saying the Ambanis only slept there "sometimes," and speculation that the house failed to conform to vastu shastra — Nita said the family had moved in around September of the previous year. Some of the media reports, she said, had been "exaggerated."

"This is the first time I am talking about my home," she told the magazine. "It is a modern home with an Indian heart... It is the only home that we have in the world."

The theme of the house, she said, was the sun and the lotus, rendered in rare woods, marble, mother-of-pearl, and crystal. The family quarters sit at the very top — "We made our home right at the top because we wanted the sunlight. So it is an elevated house on top of a garden." The Vanity Fair photographs showed Nita in a red and pink saree on a terrace garden, a book-filled living area with tall pillars overlooking Mumbai's skyline, statues of Ganesha and Shiva, a multi-storey garage, a ballroom, a spa, a theatre, guest suites, and terraced gardens.

Nita also spoke about the family's enterprises — an international preparatory school, a cricket team, a Hindi braille newspaper — and, with disarming domesticity, described tracking the weekly kitchen spending and waiting for her husband to come home from the office, typically around 11 at night.

The closed-door policy had only fed the fascination. The Vanity Fair piece — "The Talk of Mumbai" — was the first authorized glimpse behind it.

This article summarizes Vanity Fair's June 2012 interview with Nita Ambani, with brief attributed quotations.