A taste of luxury

Of all the beautiful historical buildings that Dunedin is blessed with, Olveston Historic Home is surely one of the finest.

Where/what is it

Built for businessman David Theomin and his family in 1906, this Jacobeanstyle mansion will give you a taste of the high life in 20th century Dunedin.

Designed by English architects, faced with Oamaru stone, roofed with French tiles, decorated with wallpaper from New York, and filled with antiques, artworks and artefacts from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Olveston crams a world of culture into one space.

It’s just a five-minute drive or halfhour walk from central Dunedin.

Why go

It mightn’t be quite as grand as Downton Abbey, but a traipse through Olveston’s opulent rooms – with their eclectic fine furnishings, stained glass windows and fabulous views – will make you feel like lord/lady of the manor, if only for a few hours.

Meanwhile, the downstairs kitchen and service area gives you a glimpse of how the other half lived.

The house is also a living tutorial on how to combine comfort and style.

Designed to show off the family’s possessions, it also had plenty of space for them when they lived there from 1906 to 1966, from the drawing room – where the lady of the house would have presided over afternoon tea – to the library, billiards room and card room (a Persian-style den for those uninterested in billiards).

It has more modern conveniences than many houses today, including central heating, a shower in each bathroom, heated towel rails, an internal telephone system, and service lift.