Thumbing a Nose at Indian Poverty? Antilia's Billion-Dollar House in Pictures

Few buildings on earth provoke the argument that Antilia does. Mukesh Ambani's 27-storey residence in South Mumbai — valued at around a billion dollars, with its ballroom, spa, theatre, terrace gardens, and multi-storey garage — rises over a city where millions live in slums. The contrast is the whole argument, and it has been running since the house was completed.

The critics' case is simple: in a country with India's poverty, a private skyscraper for one family is not merely extravagant but morally indefensible — a thumbing of the nose at the poor, built as a monument to wealth in the middle of need.

The defenders' case is equally simple: it is private money, legally earned, on which taxes were paid. A billionaire's house employs hundreds of people — staff, maintenance, security — and the alternative, critics of the critics note, is not that the money would have been spent on poverty alleviation; it would have been spent on something else private.

Both sides have a point, which is why the debate never ends. Antilia is not really about architecture. It is about what extreme wealth means in a poor country — whether the visibility of it is itself an injury, or whether the injury is in begrudging someone their own earnings.

The photographs will keep circulating. So will the argument.

For the story of the family's own first look inside, see our earlier piece on Nita Ambani's Vanity Fair interview.