Tovrea Castle History: The Story Behind Phoenix's Wedding Cake Castle

Tovrea Castle is the tiered "wedding cake" building on a hill near Van Buren and 52nd Street in Phoenix. Italian immigrant Alessio Carraro built it around 1929 and 1930 as the hotel for a planned resort. Meatpacker E.A. Tovrea and his wife Della bought it in 1931, and the City of Phoenix now owns it.

If you have driven the Loop 202 near Sky Harbor, you have probably seen it: a white, stacked building on a rocky knoll that looks like someone set a giant cake in the desert. People ask me about it all the time when I show homes in central and east Phoenix. Here is the story as the historians tell it.

Before the Castle: A Homestead Called Warner Heights

Long before anyone called it a castle, this was desert homestead land. According to the Tovrea Carraro Society, F.L. and Lizzie Warner homesteaded 160 acres here in 1907 and built their house on top of the rocky knoll. In the mid-1920s they subdivided part of the land as "Warner Heights." At the time, this spot sat several miles east of the Phoenix city limits, and Van Buren was the main road to Tempe.

Alessio Carraro's Big Idea

Alessio Carraro was born in Italy and made his money in the sheet metal business in San Francisco. In 1928 he came to Arizona with a plan: buy desert land east of Phoenix, build a resort hotel as the centerpiece, and sell home sites around it. He bought 277 acres between Van Buren and the Salt River and named the project Carraro Heights.

A Phoenix architect drew up plans for the hotel, but the Society of Architectural Historians notes that Carraro largely set them aside and followed his own vision of an Italian castle. Before construction even started, he planted a cactus garden on the hillside with saguaro, barrel, prickly pear, cholla and other desert plants.

How the "Wedding Cake" Was Built

Work began in December 1929, and Carraro's son Leo helped oversee it. Crews made concrete blocks right on site using decomposed granite from the property. The building rises in stacked, eight-sided tiers that get smaller as they go up, topped by a cupola and a flagpole. The basement is concrete block with a wine cellar, and the upper floors are wood frame finished in stucco, with crenellated walls around each tier.

When it was finished around the end of 1930, Carraro lit it with hundreds of colored bulbs. From a distance, the layered shape is exactly why locals started calling it the wedding cake.

You may hear a story that Tovrea built it as a copy of his own wedding cake. That one is a legend. The castle was Carraro's design, built before the Tovreas ever owned it.

Why the Resort Never Happened

Timing was not on Carraro's side. The stock market crashed just as construction began, and the Great Depression followed. There was another problem next door. E.A. Tovrea ran a large meatpacking business just east of Phoenix, and the land beside Carraro's hotel was used for livestock pens. A fancy resort and a stockyard did not make good neighbors.

In 1931, Carraro sold the castle and part of the land. Historians say he only learned later that the buyer was the Tovrea family. E.A. Tovrea had come to Phoenix in 1919 and built the Arizona Packing Company, later known as Tovrea Packing Company.

The Tovrea Years

E.A. and his wife Della moved in, but E.A. died within about a year of the purchase. Della stayed for nearly four more decades and made the place her own, adding a patio, a reflecting pool, a rose garden and a pergola. She lived at the castle until her death in the late 1960s, and that is how the Tovrea name stuck, even though Carraro built it.

How Phoenix Saved It

After Della's death, the property sat in family hands for years while the building aged. In 1993, voters approved bond funding, and the City of Phoenix began buying the castle and the land around it. Today the city owns the castle and its 44 acres of desert gardens. The castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

A major restoration was finished in time for Arizona's 100th birthday on February 14, 2012, and public tours began in March 2012. The nonprofit Tovrea Carraro Society runs the site with the city.

It reminds me of how Phoenix also fought to protect Camelback Mountain. If you like that kind of story, read how Camelback Mountain got its name and how Phoenix saved it.

Visiting Tovrea Castle Today

Tours are docent-led and include the cactus gardens, the main floor and the basement. Tickets are sold through a lottery because demand is so high, and tours sell out months ahead. The Society says the spring 2027 lottery closed in October 2026, and the fall 2027 lottery opens in June 2027. Check the Tovrea Carraro Society's website for current details.

One tip from their site: use the visitor center address, 5025 E. Van Buren Street, in your GPS. Typing in "Tovrea Castle" can send you to the Washington Street side, where there is no entrance.

The castle sits in a part of Phoenix close to Sky Harbor, Papago Park and the Tempe border. If you are thinking about living in this part of the city, my Moving to Phoenix guide covers the neighborhoods, and you can browse homes for sale in Phoenix.

Questions People Ask

Who built Tovrea Castle?
Alessio Carraro, an Italian immigrant who made his money in San Francisco, built it around 1929 and 1930 as the hotel for a planned resort called Carraro Heights.

Why is it called Tovrea Castle if Carraro built it?
Meatpacker E.A. Tovrea and his wife Della bought it in 1931. Della lived there for decades, so the Tovrea name stuck.

Can you go inside Tovrea Castle?
Yes, on a guided tour. Tickets are sold by lottery through the Tovrea Carraro Society and usually sell out months in advance.

Terry Day, REALTOR®, DeLex Realty, 10115 E Bell Rd, Scottsdale, AZ 85260.