Tovrea Castle

Tovrea Castle is a historic building on East Van Buren Street in Phoenix, standing on 44 acres bounded by the Red Mountain Freeway to the east, Washington Street to the south, Van Buren Street to the north and the main post office to the west. It was built between 1929 and 1931 in a vernacular Italianate style by Alessio Carraro, who intended it as the hotel centrepiece of a planned destination resort, and became a private residence after its purchase in 1931 by E. A. and Della Tovrea, who owned the Phoenix Stockyards then adjacent to the property. Earlier names for the structure were Carraro Heights and El Castillo, its signs read Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights, and it is known locally as the Wedding Cake Castle. The grounds hold more than 5,000 cacti of over 100 varieties, maintained by the Tovrea Carraro Society, which operates and manages the site and runs guided tours of the grounds, first floor and basement. The castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996, forms part of the Phoenix parks system and is designated a Phoenix Point of Pride. Plans to open it fully to the public in 2009 were delayed by cost overruns until 2012.

Where it is

Tovrea Castle is a historic site near Phoenix, in Maricopa County. It is one of the historic sites in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

No official visitor count is published for Tovrea Castle, so its score rests on public interest and tourism significance, and is capped below the level a measured attraction can reach. That is why the medium confidence above is not higher. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Note on the data: No official visitor count is published for this attraction.

Sources

• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikivoyage(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
• Official site: http://www.tovreacastletours.com(opens in a new tab)

Record last verified 2026-08-12.