Patrick lichfield talitha getty photo
Home / General Biography Information / Patrick lichfield talitha getty photo
It was once a royal place, but was now a ruin. In 1971 Paul had an affair, and Talitha left their Rome apartament and went to London. I have a rare book of Bill Willis’ work — you can only get it at the Majorelle Gardens bookstore in Marrakech, unless you’re willing to pay $300+ for the rare times it pops up on eBay or Amazon — and Palais du Zahir is not in the book.
J.P. Getty Jr. was an heir to one of the biggest fortunes in the world. I could probably be persuaded to part with mine!
Today, the palace is owned by writer Bernard-Henri Lévy and his actress wife Arielle Dombasle. His donations included £50 million to National Gallery, £20 million to British Film Institute and £5 million to St.
Paul's Cathedral. She was taken to a private clinic, where initial verdict was 'death from a barbiturate overdose'. Getty was afraid that his continued drug use would lead to arrest and prosecution, so he fled Italy for the UK in February, and never returned. … While Salome is playing in the background, snake charmers charm and tea boys dance, balancing on their feet trays freighted with mint tea and burning candles.” – Diana Vreeland, Vogue
Like Lady Diana and Princess Grace of Monaco, Talitha’s mystique may be amplified because she died so young, at age 30.
Old walls, old doors, what’s below your feet and above your head, somehow it’s all very special. They created a place with a name prepared for debauchery: Palais du Zahir (also known as Palais de la Zahia) — the Pleasure Palace.
“Bill created the Marrakech look, and it started with that house,” says the decorator Jacques Grange
Not many photos of Palais du Zahir from the Getty days exist publicly.
Their relationship started deteriorating , too. Unless this is a different area of the roof than what we see in the 1970 Vogue magazine.
Don’t those look like the same iron grilles that Talitha is peeking through in the photo above?
No longer a place of drug-fueled hedonistic parties (none other than Keith Richards said that Talitha Getty had access to the best opium), now the palace is a discreet address where feuding world leaders gather in privacy and try to broker peace, and for an intellectual writer to think and write in solitude.
Best she brings back entertainers—dancers, acrobats, storytellers, geomancers and magicians. Captures us and makes us want to return. The funny thing is, he wasn’t Moroccan. That is because of Bill Willis. He restored and revived zellij mosaic tilework and brought it into the 20th century with a “modern ideas with Moroccan materials” mentality.
Now, because Bill Willis outlived Talitha by many decades (she died in 1971, he in 2009), he had far more time to do his work.
In the late 1960's, Talitha Getty was one of rich and beautiful (and doomed) people - part of European Jet Set. She was also one of the first adopters of a posh-hippie style, now referred to as 'bohemian chic'.
Talitha Pol was born in Java in 1940 to Dutch parents. . Despite that, his genius still prevailed in glorious Marrakech architecture.