2 Best Sights in Asheville, North Carolina

Built in the 1890s as the home of George Vanderbilt, this astonishing 250-room, 175,000-square-foot French Renaissance château is America's largest private house and the number one attraction of its kind in North Carolina. Richard Morris Hunt designed it, and Frederick Law Olmsted landscaped the original 125,000-acre estate (now 8,000 acres). It took 1,000 workers five years to complete the gargantuan project. On view are the antiques and art collected by the Vanderbilts, including notable paintings by Renoir and John Singer Sargent, along with 75 acres of gardens, formally landscaped grounds, and hiking and biking trails. You can also see the on-site Biltmore Winery, the most visited winery in America.

Also on the grounds are a deluxe hotel, a more moderately priced hotel, many restaurants, and an equestrian center. Antler Hill Village includes a hotel, shops, restaurants, farm buildings, and crafts demonstrations. Most people tour the house on their own, but guided tours are available. Candlelight tours of the house are offered at Christmastime. Note that there are a lot of stairs to climb, but much of the house is accessible for guests in wheelchairs or with limited mobility. Pricing is complex, varying by month and day of the week, and not inexpensive, but a visit is well worth the cost for its access to the house, gardens, winery, and extensive grounds. If time allows, a bike rental from the Bike Barn in Antler Hill Village allows you to fully explore the pastoral countryside that feels miles from the nearby city. 

Self-guided visits to the interior of the house typically require advance reservations.

Asheville's most famous son, novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938), grew up in a 29-room Queen Anne–style home that his mother ran as a boardinghouse. In his prime in the 1930s, Wolfe was widely viewed as one of the best writers America had ever produced. The house—memorialized as "Dixieland" in Wolfe's novel Look Homeward, Angel—has been restored to its original 1916 condition, including the canary-color (Wolfe called it "dirty yellow") exterior. Guided tours of the house and heirloom gardens begin at half past each hour.