Graceland sits at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard in the Whitehaven neighborhood, about nine miles south of central Memphis. The mansion has 23 rooms, including eight bedrooms and bathrooms. The living room features a white couch overlooking the front yard and a fireplace with a mirrored wall. Behind it lies the music room, framed by vivid peacocks in stained glass, housing a black baby grand piano. The most famous room is the Jungle Room, added in the mid-1960s as a den with an indoor waterfall of cut fieldstone and Hawaiian-inspired furnishings. In 1976, Presley converted it into a recording studio where he cut the bulk of his final two albums, From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee and Moody Blue. The second floor, where Elvis slept, dressed, and died, has been untouched since that August morning and is closed to visitors -- the only part of Graceland where privacy still reigns.

After Elvis died, his father Vernon inherited the estate. When Vernon died in 1979, Priscilla Presley became executor for their eleven-year-old daughter Lisa Marie. The situation was dire: Graceland cost $500,000 a year to maintain, taxes were mounting, and Elvis's estate had dwindled to roughly $1 million. Priscilla studied other famous houses and museums, hired a CEO named Jack Soden, and made a gamble: she would open Graceland to the public. On June 7, 1982, the doors opened. Within one month, the estate had recouped its entire investment. Priscilla became chairwoman of Elvis Presley Enterprises, and the trust eventually grew to over $100 million. Graceland was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 -- the first site recognized for significance related to rock music -- and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006, another first for a rock music site.

Graceland draws more than 650,000 visitors annually, making it the second-most-visited private home in America after the White House. For many, the visit carries quasi-religious weight. Audio tours narrate Elvis's life in hagiographic tones. At the Meditation Garden, where Elvis is buried alongside his parents, grandmother, daughter Lisa Marie, and grandson Benjamin, some visitors pray, kneel, or quietly sing hymns. The pink Alabama fieldstone wall surrounding the grounds is covered with decades of graffiti -- love letters, petitions, and expressions of devotion. Critics have never been kind to the interior. Albert Goldman described it as resembling "some turn-of-the-century bordello down in the French Quarter of New Orleans." Greil Marcus noted that visitors from Elvis's own class background returned with one word: "Tacky." Karal Ann Marling called it "a Technicolor illusion" where "the facade is Gone With the Wind all the way" and "the den in the back is Mogambo with a hint of Blue Hawaii."

Ownership of Graceland has traced the Presley family line through triumph and tragedy. Lisa Marie inherited the estate when she turned twenty-five in 1993. She died of sudden cardiac arrest in January 2023 and is buried in the Meditation Garden beside her son Benjamin, who died in 2020. Her eldest daughter, Riley Keough, became sole trustee and owner. In 2024, a fraudulent foreclosure scheme nearly forced a sale of the property when a fictitious company claimed Lisa Marie had borrowed $3.8 million against Graceland. The plot unraveled when the Florida notary public who allegedly notarized the documents swore she had never met Lisa Marie Presley. A Missouri woman was eventually sentenced to 57 months in prison for the scheme. On the grounds, visitors can see Elvis's pink Cadillac, his Convair 880 jetliner named Lisa Marie, and the Lockheed JetStar business jet called Hound Dog II. Paul Simon, Muhammad Ali, U2, President George W. Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Prince William, and Paul McCartney have all walked these rooms. In May 2016, a newlywed couple became Graceland's twenty-millionth visitor.