Millions of people have walked through the famous music gates at Graceland over the years. They have wandered the rooms downstairs, seen the jungle room, and stood quietly at the Meditation Garden. But there is one part of the house none of them have ever seen.
The entire second floor has been closed to the public since the day Elvis Presley died. It has stayed that way ever since, at the family’s request.
What Is Up There
Elvis bought the 13-acre Memphis estate in March 1957. When he first saw the property, he told people, “This is going to be a lot nicer than Red Skelton’s house when I get it like I want it.” He poured himself into turning it into something truly his own.
The upstairs was always his private world. Elvis’s cousin Billy Smith described the layout in detail. You walked up the stairs and found two sets of large double doors, padded on the outside. One set led to Elvis’s office. The other opened into his bedroom, and off that bedroom was his bathroom.
Around the hall area was a dressing room that had once been a spare bedroom. His grandmother, Minnie Mae, stayed in another room upstairs for a time before moving downstairs. Eventually that room became Lisa Marie’s.
Nobody went upstairs unless Elvis invited them. It was simply understood.
Sealed on August 16, 1977
On that August afternoon, Elvis was found in his bathroom. He died that day of what was reported as a heart attack. The rooms upstairs were sealed just as he had left them. They have not been disturbed since.
Only two parties are allowed in today: Graceland’s VP of Archives and Exhibits, Angie Marchese, and members of the Presley family. Marchese goes up regularly to make sure everything is in order: cleaning the sinks, checking the toilets, keeping watch over a place frozen in time.
A Surprise Under the Bed
Marchese told Parade that even after years of tending to the suite, she was not prepared for what she found one day. The bed sits low to the floor, and the comforter reaches all the way down to the carpet. The carpet itself is too fragile to vacuum, so it is never lifted or moved.
“I never looked under the bed,” she said. Then one day, while pulling items for a London exhibit, she sat down on the floor and flipped back the bedspread. Right there, still in place after all these years, was a pair of blue slippers.
They are still there today.
The Few Who Have Been Inside
A small handful of people outside the family have been invited up over the years. Nicolas Cage, who was briefly married to Lisa Marie, described lying in Elvis’s bed and staring at a small fiber-optic light that spun and changed colors. He told The New York Times, “I remember staring at that and being very relaxed by it and calmed by it, and I enjoyed thinking of him looking at that and how it must have relaxed him. It was a beautiful, poignant little moment in my life.”
Oprah Winfrey was also allowed access, invited by Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley Keough. And when director Baz Luhrmann was preparing his Elvis film, Lisa Marie brought him and star Austin Butler upstairs as part of their research. Luhrmann described it as “the great privilege and great sadness” of spending 20 minutes in the bedroom with no camera, no video, just memory.
For the rest of us, the upstairs remains what it has always been: private, protected, and perfectly still. A pair of blue slippers waiting under a bed. A fiber-optic light that once helped the King of Rock and Roll drift off to sleep. Some things stay exactly where they were left.
Elvis Week concludes on August 16, 2026, with a candlelight vigil honoring his legacy.
