Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina

Designed by architect-to-the-stars Richard Morris Hunt and opened to the George Vanderbilt III family and guests on Christmas Eve, 1895, this colossal 250-room country retreat on 8,000 acres is the largest private home in America. Today, a successful tourist destination, the house reflects the unbridled spending and ostentation of the Gilded Age. But it is the brilliant gardens laid out by Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmstead that remain in your memory.