Three Of Sydney CBD's Most Luxurious Penthouses

The last few years has seen a considerable uptake in apartment living across Sydney, notably in the prime market as driven by a slew of new luxury developments.

It’s meant recent Australian sales records – cue Crown’s One Barangaroo and its waterside neighbour, One Sydney Harbour – as purchasers look to secure a standout property and also embrace the benefits of expansive inner-city living.

While the penthouses of the aforementioned towers are now gone, there remains some unique, cloud-catching CBD abodes available.

Here, three of the best to purchase now.

3303/203 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

The Castle Penthouse, located in Castle Residences and designed by Candelepas & Associates architects, sees a 4-bedroom, 4- bathroom, 2-car parking residence delivered in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.

Here a rooftop terrace boasts breathtaking views over Hyde Park and the city skyline, with an extensive and undoubtedly luxurious finish by Studio Aria ensuring it is one of the finest properties in Australia.

The penthouse is reached via a private lift, through a double door entrance and sees opulent finishes including the use of stone benchtops, large porcelain tiles and bespoke joinery.

Expect an open-plan design, leading outwards to the buildings highly desirable winter gardens. It’s here you’ll find an opulent kitchen, complete with Gaggenau appliances.

The penthouse is also offers a master bedroom that spans the top floor, and opens out to a sky garden with decked spa.

Those fortunate to call Castle Residences home will also enjoy various hotel amenities – such as pool and gym access as well as desirable in-house dining sourced via restaurants such as Henry’s Bread and Wine, Dixon & Sons and Spice Trader. Meanwhile, housekeeping, concierge, valet parking and 24-hour security are all accessible via in-house app.

The property is expected to welcome residents from end of August 2021.

The listing is with McGrath Pyrmont’s Robert Alfeldi (+61 418 982 688); mcgrath.com.au

Level 43/163 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000

Much has already been written about the Boyd Residence. The grand, lavish, award-winning penthouse sits some 180-metres above street level offering. 2395sqm in the heart of the CBD.

Spread across three levels comes 4-bedroom, 5-bathrooms and 2 car parking. Inside sees unprecedented levels of privacy and opulence, with 24-hour security.

Accessed via private lift, it opens to a glass wall with built-in champagne storage. Elsewhere a sleek fireplace, multiple seating groupings and walls of glass take in the panorama of the city.

Each bedroom suite arrives with a marble bathroom, while the rest of the residence is framed by double-height ceiling and dramatic walls of glass.

Also, a resort-style private rooftop pool tops the living space, adding further luxury to the pad.

The listing is with Christie’s International’s Ken Jacobs (+61 407 190 152) and LJ Hooker Double Bay’s Bill Malouf (0411 428 354); theboydresidence.com.au

83.01/115 Bathurst Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

Known as the ‘King’ Penthouse, comes this luxurious pad inspired by the global cities of New York and London.

Here, at the very pinnacle of the Greenland Centre tower comes panoramic views of the CBD, Blue Mountains, Hyde Park and Sydney Harbour.

The 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom, 4-car parking penthouses offers sophisticated details, with glamorous stone island benchtops in the kitchen and concealed scullery, to towering balconies overlooking Sydney.

The master bedroom features an opulent dressing room that opens to reveal handsome timber-panelled interiors with wide drawers and open display shelving for all your finery, handbags, watches, belts and scarves

The master bathroom is cloaked in emerald green marble and features high-quality fixtures, a free-standing bath and heated towel rack bringing minimalist glamour while a soaring skylight adds luminous radiance.

Further amenities include a 30-metre outdoor pool, gym, spa, sun deck, and multi-function residents’ room.

Contact Ben Stewart (+61 412753740) of CBRE for more information; thegreenlandcentre.com.au

A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.

The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.

“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”

The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.

It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.

In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.

“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.

The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.

“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.

He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.

The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.

“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.

His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.

“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.

When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.

They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.

The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.

For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.

“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”

As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.

“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”

Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.

Three Of Sydney CBD’s Most Luxurious Penthouses

Sydney’s prestige market is looking up, here’s three of the best on the market right now.

Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.