The title compound, C(26)H(28)N(2)O(9)·1.5H(2)O, the product of an acid-catalysed Wagner-Meerwein skeletal rearrangement, crystallizes as a sesquihydrate with the O atom of one of the two independent water mol-ecules occupying a special position on a twofold axis. The organic mol-ecule comprises a fused penta-cyclic system containing two five-membered rings (cyclo-pentane and tetra-hydro-furan) and three six-membered rings (piperidinone, tetra-hydro-pyridine and benzene). The five-membered rings have the usual envelope conformations, and the central six-membered piperidinone and tetra-hydro-pyridine rings adopt boat and sofa conformations, respectively. In the crystal, there are three independent O-H⋯O hydrogen bonds, which link the organic mol-ecules and water mol-ecules into complex two-tier layers parallel to (001). The layers are further linked into a three-dimensional framework by attractive inter-molecular carbon-yl-carbonyl inter-actions.