Brimming with grandeur, the world's most splendid stately homes are breath-taking in their majesty. Feast your eyes on our pick of the most magnificent historic country houses, from England's real-life Downton Abbey to the finest mansions of America's Gilded Age.
America's largest privately-owned house, Biltmore was built for George Washington Vanderbilt II in the late 19th century. The colossal Gilded Age mansion, which is still owned by a scion of the Vanderbilt family, is located in North Carolina and sprawls over 178,926 square feet.
Boasting more than 250 exquisitely decorated rooms, the gigantic house was modelled on the Château de Blois in France's Loire Valley and was built over a six-year period by thousands of workers. The epic mansion is open to the public 365 days a year, pandemic-dependent.
Fittingly for one of the world's most wealthy families, the house is spectacular in every regard. The biggest room in the house, the medieval-style banqueting hall is seriously impressive, with a seven-story high ceiling, intricately-carved wooden panelling and a supersized table. According to the official Biltmore Estate Instagram, the 67 chairs in the Banquet Hall were purchased between late 1890 and spring of 1894.
Vanderbilt travelled throughout Europe and Asia, collecting fabulous antiques and paintings for his country home, meaning Biltmore is a treasure trove of art. Works by the likes of Renoir and John Singer Sargent hang on its walls, along with a selection of breathtaking 16th century tapestries. In 2017, tax officials in North Carolina estimated the house itself to be worth $37 million (£27m), and the estate with land and various business interests to be worth around $300 million (£220m). This is likely to have increased dramatically over the last five years.
George and Edith Vanderbilt made significant contributions to the people who worked at Biltmore and lived in the community. According to the Biltmore official website, the estate has continued this tradition of philanthropy and community involvement, supporting residents of Asheville and Western North Carolina. In this photograph, the couple sit on the steps of another home on the estate’s original 125,000 acres, Buckspring Lodge.
Considered the grandest country house in England, Blenheim Palace in Woodstock is the only non-royal, non-ecclesiastical palace in the land. Steeped in history, the estate is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Baroque-style palace was built by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, between 1705 and 1722, and is the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. While Blenheim is now open to the public, the current Duke and his family still reside there, albeit in a modest farmhouse on the estate.
Blenheim Palace is chock-full of antique furnishings and is home to an important collection of paintings. Among the most spectacular rooms are the cavernous Great Hall, the sumptuous saloon and the roomy library, which displays an enviable collection of Churchill memorabilia. If you can't visit in person, you can take a 360 peek inside online here.
Located within a 12,000-acre estate, the palace sits in nearly 2,000 acres of perfectly landscaped parklands, which were designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Best seen from the sky, Brown's designed are beautifully realised by the estate's many expert staff, who maintain the house and grounds throughout the year. Of course, all this comes at a price – property expert Henry Pryor estimates the Blenheim estate is worth in the region of $236 million (£180m).
Another extravagant country home built by the Vanderbilts, the closest thing America has to a royal family, The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island is a 70-room Italian Renaissance-style palazzo. Constructed for Cornelius Vanderbilt II between 1893 and 1895, it is set on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
The grandest of the so-called Newport 'cottages', The Breakers was built as a summer home. Now owned and operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County, the mansion is open to the public all year round, on one condition – that the third floor must always be left intact for the family to stay in, according to reports.
The mansion's 70 rooms occcupy a total floor space of 62,484 square feet across five floors. Built by artisans in France and adorned with wall panels made from pure platinum, the dazzling Morning Room was shipped to the US and assembled on-site.
The largest room in the house, the Great Hall is wonderfully ostentatious with its OTT gilding, swish marble columns and fancy stonework. Indeed, every single room in the house is lavishly decorated, reflecting the wealth and power of the Vanderbilt family. According to local sources, the house cost $7 million (£5m) to build, which translates to roughly $150 million (£110m) in today's money.
Daily tours currently available to the public pull in nearly 300,000 visitors a year. Previously closed-off areas such as the underground tunnel and basement are now accessible, making The Breakers one of the most popular attractions in Rhode Island.
This Hogwarts-esque beauty on the Isle of Bute in Scotland is widely recognised as one of the UK's finest Gothic Revival mansions. Mount Stuart House was built in the late 1870s for John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, who was the UK's wealthiest person at the time.
No expense has been spared on this place. The staircase, pictured, is made entirely of white marble. The Mount Stuart House chapel, meanwhile, packs in more rare Cararra white marble than any other building in the British Isles and boasts even more of the white stuff than the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
As the 3rd Marquess was a fan of the era's latest technology, Mount Stuart was the first house in Scotland to run on electricity. The moneyed marquess also installed the world's first indoor-heated swimming pool and one of the first-ever telephones.
Harbouring more than its fair share of treasures, this antiques paradise is a haven for scholars – its extensive library houses a multitude of valuable manuscripts, including Shakespeare's First Folio. If this has got you in the Harry Potter mood, check out these magical homes that look like Hogwarts.
A staggering five miles of corridors wind within Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire. The largest private house in the UK, it sprawls across 250,000 square feet of floor space and contains a room for every day of the year.
A fusion of Baroque and Palladian architecture, the house was vastly expanded in the 18th century by Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. It was inherited by the Earls Fitzwilliam in the late 18th century, and remained in the family until 1979.
The house is currently owned by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, which acquired the property for £7 million ($8.8m) in February 2016. After being closed to the public for over 60 years, the Trust began offering guided tours of the house again.
While large sections of the house were restored by the previous owner, architect Clifford Newbold, 'the Versailles of the North' was still in pretty bad shape when the Preservation Trust took control. An extensive restoration programme to return Wentworth Woodhouse to its former glory was initially estimated at £40 million ($54m), but calculations in 2018 put the figure at closer to £200 million ($270m).
Fortunately, the British government contributed £7.6 million ($9.5m) towards the restoration project, and a large percentage of vital repair work has been carried out already with the support of Historic England. See the transformation and read more about how England's largest stately home has been rescued from ruin.
Perhaps Canada's poshest home, Casa Loma is a landmark Gothic Revival mansion with a storied past located in midtown Toronto. The turreted house was built over a three-year period from 1911 to 1914 for financier Sir Henry Pellatt, at a cost of $3.5 million (£2.6m).
When the house was completed in 1914 it was the largest in Canada, with a total of 98 rooms covering 64,700 square feet. Casa Loma has all the trappings of an elite stately home, with its showy state rooms and guest suites deserving of royalty.
Now a museum and events space, Casa Loma is open to the public all year long – depending on lockdown measures.
The house is a popular wedding venue and has featured in several big Hollywood movies, including X-Men, Chicago and The Pacifier. Its value today has been estimated at over CA$100 million (US$76m/£60m).
Recognise this iconic country pile? Of course you do! Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England, doubled as the Crawley family seat in the hit TV show Downton Abbey, and has been used as a location for countless other TV shows, music videos and movies, including Eyes Wide Shut.
The ancestral home of the Earls of Carnarvon, this Jacobethan mansion dates from 1679 and was rebuilt in the Victorian era. Set in 1,000 acres of glorious parkland designed by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, Highclere is open to the public in the summer and at select times during the rest of the year.
Owned and managed by the 8th Earl and Countess, the house has over 50 bedrooms and scores of elegant reception rooms, including the ornate music room and the library, which contains 6,000 rare books. With its stone fireplace and Old Master paintings, the main galleried saloon is particularly impressive.
Highclere is filled with intriguing treasures from antiquity. The 5th Earl of Carnarvon famously co-discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and owned an impressive collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts that are on display, from prized pottery to jewellery. If it was ever put up for sale it would be worth north of $190 million (£150m). Here we can see a hidden door to a secret room in the library, leading to the music room.
In 1919, American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst designed this estate on his ranchland overlooking the village of San Simeon. The design came to fruition over the next 28 years, with the aid of renowned architect, Julia Morgan. By 1947, the hilltop complex included a main building with two towers, three guest houses, and 127 acres of terraced gardens, fountains and pools.
Hearst called the estate 'La Cuesta Encantada' (The Enchanted Hill). Pictured here is the extravagant living room, dripping with antiques and intricate details. Unless hosting private functions, Hearst Castle is open for public tours, such as the Grand Rooms Tour or Julia Morgan tour, which offers insight into the first certified female architect in California.
At the heart of Hearst’s private suite, found on the third floor of ‘Casa Grande’, lies the sumptuous Gothic Study where, according to the official Hearst Castle site, he would preview the newspapers each night before the presses ran. The suite sits within the main building of the San Simeon hilltop estate, boasting concrete arches decorated by Camille Solon in 1934-35, and an intricate Spanish ceiling that dates back to the early 1400s.
After two years of restoration and repair works, in August 2018 the famous outdoor ‘Neptune Pool’ at Hearst Castle was finally refilled with water that refracts light to create this captivating turquoise. The Enchanted Hill estate also boasts a luxurious, ornate indoor ‘Roman Pool’, tiled and decorated with eight statues of Roman gods, goddesses and heroes.
The only private home in the United States to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Monticello is the work of the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, and the National Historical Landmark was "designed and redesigned and built and rebuilt for more than forty years", according to the official Monticello website. Construction began in 1769 in keeping with Jefferson's first design, and was complete by 1809. The site is surrounded by gardens and a working farm.
Before and after his presidency, architect Jefferson lived at Monticello with his wife and two daughters. The Jeffersons regularly hosted family and friends at the abode. He estimated the value of the house and outbuildings for insurance purposes in 1800 at $6,300. According to the NY Times, Jefferson's heirs had hoped they could auction Monticello for $20,000 (£14.7k), approximately $477,000 (£350k) today.
The entire structure contains a total of 43 rooms built across 11,000 square feet, including the cellars below the house but not including the pavilions or rooms under the terraces. Jefferson added a skylight in his bedroom and a partition wall to form a bed alcove below, with a closet above, accessed by a ladder.
The Monticello gardens were a botanic showpiece, a source of food and an "experimental laboratory of ornamental and useful plants from around the world", according to the official Monticello website. Jefferson grew 330 vegetable varieties in Monticello's 1,000 ft long garden terrace. The website has its own GIS database of the fascinating – and sometimes exotic – trees, woody shrubs and perennial plants at Monticello.
Jefferson was buried at Monticello in 1826, within the Monticello Cemetery. Because Jefferson died more than $107,000 in debt, his daughter Martha and her financial manager, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, had to sell many of the contents of Monticello, along with the plantation itself. During the Civil War, the Confederacy seized and sold the property. After many years of litigation, relative Jefferson Monroe Levy took possession in 1879, before eventually selling Monticello to the newly created Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923, which owns Monticello today.
The historic Dundurn Castle was once home to railway magnate, lawyer and Premier of the United Canadas, Sir Allan Napier MacNab. The 40-room Italianate-style villa was built in the 1830s on Burlington Heights, the former site of a fortified military encampment established by the British in 1813, according to the official Hamilton website.
The City of Hamilton spent nearly $3 million (£1.7m) renovating the site to make it open to the public. Dundurn Castle is now open all year round as a civic museum, hosting guided tours and field trips around the historic site; since Covid restrictions came into effect, virtual tours have also been offered. The Duchess of Cornwall is the great, great, great granddaughter of Sir Allan MacNab and the Dundurn museum’s Patron.
Owner MacNab hired architect Robert Wetherall to design this stately home, with construction complete by 1835. The pillars and portico were added in 1855 as part of the preparations for the wedding of MacNab's daughter Sophia, according to Dundurn Castle by Edward Smith.
The two-acre historic kitchen garden has been restored and tended to by staff (in costume), who help grow over 200 heirloom varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers for use in the historic kitchen. Dundurn Castle gardens are open to guests from mid-May to mid-October, with free garden tours in the Summer.
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