Biltmore Estate

Biltmore Estate lies on the southern edge of Asheville, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. George Washington Vanderbilt II, a grandson of the railway and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, built it as a country retreat. Construction ran from 1889 to 1895, and Vanderbilt opened the house to family and friends on Christmas Eve 1895.

The architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the house in the style of the French Renaissance chateaux of the Loire Valley, and Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park, laid out the gardens, forests and approach road. The estate's forests were managed by Gifford Pinchot and later Carl Schenck, whose work here helped start professional forestry in the United States.

The house has about 250 rooms, including 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces, and a floor area of about 16,600 square metres, making it the largest privately owned house in the country. Highlights include the Banquet Hall with its seven storey high ceiling, a library of around 10,000 volumes, an indoor swimming pool and bowling alley in the basement, and early electric lighting and lifts. Outside are a walled garden, a conservatory and an Italian garden.

The Vanderbilt family opened Biltmore to the public in 1930, and descendants of George Vanderbilt still own it. The estate today covers about 8,000 acres, with a winery, Antler Hill Village, hotels, and trails for walking, cycling and horse riding. The house is decorated for Christmas each year from early November.

A daytime ticket, booked online for a specific date and entry time to the house, is needed to visit. Prices vary by season and day, and booking ahead is advised, especially for the Christmas season. Allow a full day to see the house, gardens and village.

Vanderbilt assembled the land piece by piece, eventually buying about 125,000 acres in nearly 700 parcels, including more than 50 farms and at least five cemeteries. The house cost a reported $5 million to build. Guests included the novelists Edith Wharton and Henry James. Vanderbilt married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in Paris in 1898, and their only child, Cornelia, was born in the Louis XV Room in 1900.

After his death in 1914, Edith carried out his wish that much of the forest land be preserved, and it became the core of Pisgah National Forest. Cornelia and her husband, John Francis Amherst Cecil, opened the house to the public in March 1930 at the request of the City of Asheville, to help the estate through the Great Depression. During the Second World War, in 1942, 62 paintings and 17 sculptures from the National Gallery of Art in Washington were moved to Biltmore by train for safekeeping.

The estate became a National Historic Landmark in 1963. It closed for a time after Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina in September 2024 and reopened in November 2024. Ticket prices change by date and are listed on the official Biltmore website.