In 2003, Gore Vidal and Howard Austen moved from La Rondinaia, their long-time home in Ravello, Italy, to a house Vidal had owned in the Hollywood Hills since the 1970s. They returned to Los Angeles, Vidal said later, to live out “the Cedars-Sinai years.” In fact, Austen was seriously ill when they returned to California. He died not long after they returned. Vidal passed away in the house last week.

Los Angeles Magazine revisits its story on the house, Casa Vidal, from December 2011, on its website:

He repopulated the Outpost Drive house, which had been rented by folks like Nicolas Cage (who put solar panels on the roof) and others not so appreciative of the house’s charms, with his vast collection of paintings and antique furniture. It seemed to [Los Angeles Magazine writer Andrew] Myers, as he chatted with Vidal about the house for “Casa Vidal,” a feature in Los Angeles, that the novelist, essayist, playwright, and onetime politician had at long last developed a certain fondness for the place. “It’s how much blood you put in a house that matters,” Vidal told Myers, an apparent reference to the masterful restoration by L.A. conservator Zoltan Papp that brought the exterior and interior back to Vidal standards.

From the house, bedecked with the memorabilia from a lifetime of mixing with political, film, literary, and real-life royalty, Vidal mounted a Broadway revival of his 1960 play, “The Best Man.” His health kept him from attending its premiere this year, nor would he live to see its final performance, scheduled next month. In the final weeks of the house’s restoration last year, as the last touches were also put on “The Best Man,” Vidal would spend many afternoons and more than a few nights at his beloved Beverly Hills Hotel. The noise of the workmen often drove him from the bed he had set up in his art-filled living room, the better to be near the fireplace and avoid the stairs of the two-story Spanish Colonial Revival house. Many other days were spent in New York casting the play, yet he happily returned to the house, though he still had mixed feelings about L.A. He had been lured from his East Coast roots by the film industry, in which he famously toiled before leaving for Italy. “Of all cities, the one where you can most think yourself into somewhere else is L.A.,” Vidal told Myers. “It’s waiting to be invented. It’s to be made up.”

Curbed Los Angeles has a slideshow of photos of the house here.