The Marland Mansion is the single most extraordinary building in north-central Oklahoma — a 43,000-square-foot Mediterranean-revival estate built between 1925 and 1928 for the oilman Ernest Whitworth Marland, who modelled it on the sixteenth-century Villa Farnese near Rome. Three floors, fifty-five rooms, a ballroom, a gold-and-silver leaf ceiling in the grand foyer, hand-carved limestone, polo grounds, a boathouse and a guest house called the Artist Studio.
The mansion is now a museum, open to the public for self-guided or docent-led tours. Several of the rooms are arranged as miniature museums on Marland himself, the 101 Ranch oil discovery, and the Discalced Carmelite order who briefly owned the property. The grounds, with their formal Italianate gardens and the famous bronze "Pioneer Woman" sculptures by Jo Davidson, are open without admission.