‘Southern Charm’ Icon—and ‘White Lotus’ Inspiration’—Patricia Altschul Offers Rare Glimpse Inside Private Quarters of Her Charleston Mansion

“Southern Charm” star Patricia Altschul is as much a fixture of Charleston’s high society as the pink, palatial downtown mansion where she holds court.

The Richmond, VA-born socialite, who spent a significant portion of her adult life in New York, made the move down South in 2008, six years after the death of her third husband, Arthur Altschul.

In the years since, Patricia Altschul, 84, has become a veritable icon of the area and beyond, so much so that her opulent lifestyle and sassy personality are said to have inspired Parker Posey's character in "The White Lotus," Victoria Ratliff.

Yet there is much more to Altschul and her life than meets the eye—and the cameras.

Though "Southern Charm" fans may consider themselves to be more than familiar with Altschul's historic Charleston mansion, they are in fact offered only a tiny glimpse of the palatial property, with the socialite choosing to keep the most intimate spaces of her home away from the cameras.

But now, in the latest installment of Celebrity Sanctuary, Altschul opens that space up to Realtor.com®, while opening up about the fascinating history of the home—and how she came to own it.

It took an extensive search to find the Charleston mansion of her dreams, she shares, but in the end, the 1853-built manse known as the Isaac Jenkins Mikell House met all of her meticulous expectations.

She hired famed interior decorator Mario Buatta to transform the 10-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 9,500-square-foot residence, which once served as a public library, into an exclusive estate.

The beloved "Bravolebrity" affectionately referred to as “Ms. Patricia” reveals she recently sold the home to her son (and reality TV co-star), Whitney Sudler-Smith. However, the witty dame continues to be the property’s premier tenant and host of all manner of events for her “Southern Charm” co-stars.

In recent months, those soirees have included Madison LeCroy’s baby shower and the annual gentlemen’s dinner with the series’ male cast members, where party fouls such as broken chairs and spilled drinks have turned into an unintentional tradition.

Atschul takes it all in her stride.

“I have expert restoration people in New York, so I take care of that. I wouldn't want them to be responsible,” Altschul says about the etiquette of who’s responsible for fixing the furniture before noting the social faux pas that truly concerns her most.

“I have seen a change, gosh, in the last 15 or 20 years. Everything is more casual,” observes Altschul. “So much bad behavior is now accepted, especially on the show.

“The furniture is one thing. There is a lot of wine spillage. It's been wine, food. I don't know why they can't control their utensils—or their mouths."

Armed with a “product that gets rid of red wine stains,” the celebrated author of “The Art of Southern Charm” and “Eat, Drink, and Remarry” tells Realtor.com that she takes her position as social matriarch on and off the show very seriously.

“Young people send me messages all the time. It's interesting, I get a lot of questions about etiquette and about living a better life so that you can enjoy things visually and so that you're comfortable, but yet, more elevated,” she explains. 

Rather than being a social gatekeeper, Altschul openly shares her rules for social engagements, and she hopes her example is an invitation the next generation of home entertainers will accept, so the traditions she’s held up all these years continue.

“What I try to do is present formal dinner parties,” shares Altschul.

“I would say plan a month ahead,” she advises. “If you're giving a dinner party, for example, get your invitations out a month early. It used to be they had to be proper formal invitations. Now, people do it on the internet, but I prefer a phone call.

“Make sure you have everything organized. Get all of your suppliers, get commitments from the cooks, the servers—any help that you need—and decide if it's a theme or if it's a dinner party, what you're going to have, and get your wine and your drink table set way before. I'd say that could be done a week before.”

While Altschul and her abode are seemingly always ready for company, in this installment of Celebrity Sanctuary, Ms. Patricia rolls out a special welcome mat to her home’s private quarters—her library and primary bedroom—where she recharges her social battery between events and thoroughly enjoys her charmed life.

I sold the house to Whitney, so now it's Whitney's house. He has a wing, a bedroom wing, with an elevator and an outside door and his own entrance, which is separate from my bedroom wing.

There is another house on the property, which [my former butler] Michael [Kelcourse] used to live in, so Whitney turned that into his office on the top floor, and then it's a living room, bar, kitchen. 

I have a housekeeper. I've had a housekeeper for as long as I've been here. I've had a secretary for 23 years. I have two butlers, four dogs, and then it seems like a thousand other work people.

What I have discovered is that I can never open my door unless I'm fully clothed, have on makeup, my hair combed. It used to be that, way back when, when I first moved in, I would get newspapers.

And when the show first aired, I opened the door in my nighty and there were 20 people outside the fence, so I learned quickly that you can't really go out unless you're presentable.

It's very easy [to separate work and home life] actually, because we plan these things, or I plan them and I organize them, so I know that it's controlled chaos for the time that it's being filmed. And other than that, I mean, I have my own friends, my own parties, my own dinners, and so there really isn't a conflict. It's very easy to manage.

I wanted this style of home. The house that I had in the country on Long Island was colonnaded. I think it was a 1929, 1930 home, but it was a replication of a Greek Revival. 

I wanted a pure Southern Greek Revival home that had good bones, that had a beautiful garden, architecture, high ceilings—I think the ceiling height is something like 16 feet—wooden embellishments, the Anaglypta, the ceiling, the wood moldings, and it was just perfect. 

I looked for three years before I found this home, so it took me a while to find it. But the minute I saw it, I knew it was The One. 

It was built during the period of the Greek Revival even though it is colonnaded on the piazza—we don't call them verandas, we call them piazzas here in Charleston—but the capitals are Roman, we think, because they're ram's heads and it's not a purely Greek motif.

When it was a library, they fortunately just used movable wooden shelving, so they didn't destroy any of the original details, which was fortunate. But every system had to be replaced. All electric, air conditioning, heating. Every wall had to be replastered, repainted, all the floors redone. 

We have original floors in the house, and before we even started to decorate, we had all of the kind of building construction to redo. Then, after all of that was done, Mario got to work. 

I had gotten rid of my house on Long Island, so I had a lot of furniture that I had had. And then we traveled and added to the furniture pieces we needed.

I have decorative floors that I think are really beautiful, and the walls are faux marble. Mario had a team from New York who did all of his faux paintings, faux finishing, and they were here for six months on scaffolds, painting the walls and the floors and the entry hall. 

That was just one part. Then there was the wallpaper, movement of furniture, and not all got done at one time, not every room was done at one time, because I used to say to Mario that he was like watching paint dry, literally, in terms of the way he worked. You had to have patience. 

I would say to do everything, it took three, three and a half [years]. 

I have two [sanctuary] rooms. One is the library because I'm a reader and I love to go in there. It's very cozy, so the library is one. I like to go in the library and just close the door and read, maybe have a cocktail. Make a phone call. It’s very, very cozy. They're warm colors [in] there, and it's very enveloping as a room in terms of its decor.

In the library, there are a lot of things that I have collected or [that] came from my family. I have family pieces here, some of the silhouettes, some of the paintings, some of the furniture came from my family. 

Then there are things here in the house that Arthur and I bought on our travels or we got at auction, and so it's just filled with things that have given me happy memories over the years.

And then my bedroom is a true sanctuary. I would say it's a pale blue all in the same pattern. It’s peaceful, it's secluded, and it's very restful. I have a fireplace in my bedroom. I have it on now. In fact, I'm in my bedroom.

I don't think [the “Southern Charm” cast members] really pay much attention to it.

I know Shep [Rose] was recently on a podcast, and he had been staying with Craig [Conover] because he sold his one house and bought another one here on Sullivan's Island, and they asked him what it was like staying with Craig, and he said, “Oh, it's so easy and comfortable. It's not like staying in Whitney and Patricia's house, which is like a museum.” So I think that's how they think of it.

I find it very comfortable. I mean, I have a friend who has incredible taste, and her house is really a museum. But the 18th-century furniture, you really can't sit on. The 18th-century furniture mostly applies to side tables. All of my pieces that are upholstered are very down-filled and squishy and comfortable.

It's filled with comfortable furniture. Mario was known for his color combinations. He was a master of design, mixing colors and patterns and so forth, but also of having everything be comfortable like an English country house.

I have Craig's [Sewing Down South] outdoor pillows, and I have my “I have no interest in an inferior martini” [pillow collaboration with Furbish Studio] here in my bedroom because it's blue, and then the pink [“eat, drink, and remarry”] one is in the guest room.

I'm getting ready to do another collaboration, but I was accused of copying Craig when I did my pillow collection, and I would like to point out that I was the first one to do pillows because I had an HSN line. 

If you go back to the early days of “Southern Charm,” I gave Craig his first job at making a pillow for me and he flubbed it. Remember? Because I wouldn't want to be accused of copying anybody.

The only thing I would say is that the home is a happy place filled with happy memories, and it's very inviting, and I love to have people enjoy it with me.