From the former homes of famous authors to architectural marvels by esteemed architects, hundreds of perfectly preserved historic homes are waiting around the world to be discovered. But where do you start?
Fortunately, the Travel Insurance experts at AllClear have compiled a list of the world’s top-rated historical homes, according to traveller reviews.
Click or scroll to discover the very best homes to visit to get your history fix…
Drawing from extensive desk research which collated a list of the top 100 most popular historical homes, the experts at AllClear then analysed all four- and five-star reviews to obtain a percentage of reviews with four stars and above. This could then be used to assess the most highly ranked homes worldwide.
Let’s see what they discovered...
The prolific author of cannon works including The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway lived a life of adventure and travel.
However, between 1931 and 1939, Hemingway and his second wife Pauline settled in Key West, Florida, in this elegant Spanish Colonial house. Highlights of the property include its beautiful gardens and an impressive 60-foot-long pool which cost £15,800 ($20k) to build in 1938, or £354,300 ($448k) in today's money!
The Hemingway House Museum is open to the public year-round for guests to explore where the author penned To Have and Have Not and meet the descendants of his famous six-toed cat, Snow White.
This elegant Moroccan landmark was commissioned to encase the tombs of Sultan Mohammed V and his two sons, the late King Hassan II and Prince Abdallah. Its construction began immediately following Mohammed V’s death in 1961 and was completed 10 years later.
While not technically a home but rather the final resting place for the nation's esteemed rulers, the monument resembles a small palace featuring spectacular chandeliers, red carpets and breathtaking motifs. Its distinctive white marble façade and peaked green roof echo the vision of its Vietnamese architect. The mausoleum and its accompanying mosque are open to the public for those who wish to pay their respects to the deceased rulers.
This open-air museum in Inuyama, Japan, is an architectural 'theme park' designed to protect historic houses from Japan's Meiji Period (1868–1912). The park includes more than 60 historical dwellings and structures, which have been transported from across Japan and reconstructed on 250 acres (101ha).
Perhaps the most famous building in the collection is a reconstruction of the main entrance and lobby of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel (pictured here), which operated in Tokyo between 1923 and 1967.
Located in Melbourne, Australia, the Rippon Lea Estate is a heritage-listed house and garden constructed in 1868 for Sir Frederick Sargood, a wealthy Melbourne businessman, politician and philanthropist. The house was built in what has been dubbed the “Lombardic Romanesque” style, so called because of its use of polychromatic patterned brickwork inspired by the architecture in Lombardy, Italy.
Opened to the public in 1974, the home was built for entertaining grand parties and includes a ballroom with a capacity of 500 people,14 acres (5.7ha) of pleasure gardens and an old Hollywood-style swimming pool.
Celebrated French poet, politician, playwright and author of classics like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo’s literary career spanned more than six decades.
Though exiled from France in later life for his political views, Hugo spent many years in Paris, 16 of them in an apartment in the townhouse Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée between 1832 and 1848. Today, Maison de Victor Hugo is a museum open to the public, along with his exile home in Guernsey.
The longtime family home and plantation of American founding father and first president George Washington, Mount Vernon remains one of the United States’ most-visited historical landmarks. The 5,000 acres (2,023ha) of land on which the sprawling estate now sits came to Washington's great-grandfather in 1674 and was steadily expanded over the next century.
The Palladian-style mansion at the heart of the property was constructed in 1734 by Washington’s father and was expanded by Washington himself twice. Despite his political obligations, the first American president lived at the 21-room residence until his death in 1799.
A heritage-listed residence, colonial farm and country estate, Vaucluse House in Sydney, Australia, was once the homestead of statesman William Charles Wentworth and his family.
The gothic revival-style home was constructed in 1803 and includes the main house, a kitchen wing, stables, outbuildings and 28 acres (11ha) of formal gardens and grounds. Australia’s first official house museum, Vaucluse House is open to the public as a heritage site.
This stately regency home in Devon, England was constructed in the neo-classical style between 1820 and 1823 for Colonel John Palmer Chichester. Chichester commissioned Thomas Lee, who had trained under prolific neo-classical architect Sir John Soane, whose work the house closely resembles.
The home was later expanded in 1865 by Chichester’s grandson, and by 1876, the estate comprised a sprawling 5,300 acres (2,144ha). The house and its acreage were donated to the National Trust in 1949, and today serve as a museum packed with art, memorabilia and antiques belonging to the Chichester family.
One of America’s most spectacular stately homes and the largest privately-owned house in the US, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, is just one of the spectacular properties constructed by the Vanderbilt family.
Biltmore was built for George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and was intended for use only as a summer house for the largely New York-based Vanderbilt family. The 250-room home was constructed in the French Renaissance chateau-esque style and epitomises the luxury and opulence of the American Gilded Age mansion.
Designed by celebrated Catalan Modernist architect Antoni Gaudí, Casa Batlló is a remodel of a previously built house, and today is considered one of Gaudi’s greatest masterpieces. The house is known locally as Cassa dels Ossos (House of the Bones) because of its vaguely skeletal appearance resulting from seamlessly flowing, sculpted stonework.
Gaudí completed the remodel between 1904 and 1906, but it has been refurbished several times since then and, in 2005, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Recognisable the world over for its iconic pink and green façade, colourful gardens and serene water lily ponds, Claude Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny, France, draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year who come to marvel at the famous impressionist painter’s former home.
Monet painted from his Giverny residence from 1883 until his death in 1926, pouring tremendous energy into renovating and decorating the home. Today, the property is largely as Monet left it, operating as a house museum and public gardens.
American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder became a childhood staple with her Little House series, based on her own girlhood experiences in a pioneer and settler family.
While Laura famously lived in many places throughout her life, her family moved to the Missouri homestead Rocky Ridge Farm in 1894. The original farmhouse took 17 years to complete, while The Rock House (pictured) was built by Wilder's daughter Rose for her parents in 1923. It's here where she honed her writing skills and ultimately penned her best-selling children’s books. Today, the farm is a museum dedicated to Laura’s life and works.
Celebrated author of Regency romances such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s works have been studied, reprinted and adapted for the stage and screen for over 200 years. Jane Austen’s House Museum, informally known as Chawton Cottage, was the author’s residence from 1809 to 1817, during which time she penned her six most famous novels.
The Grade-I listed building had served as both a pub and an inn prior to Austen’s residence, but in 1949 was established as a house museum operated by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust.
Made famous as the 40-year home of Winston Churchill, Chartwell is a Grade I-listed country house in Westerham, Kent. The former British Prime Minster bought the property in 1922 and lived there until shortly before his death in 1965.
The red brick and stone manor can be traced back to the 16th century but has been remodelled extensively over the years. A mix of Tudor, Georgian and Gothic Revival styles, Chartwell was rebuilt and extended substantially in the early 1920s.
Today, the house is owned by the National Trust and operates as a museum dedicated to the life of Winston Churchill.
This two-storey Queen Anne Victorian house in Atlanta, Georgia, was originally built in 1895. However, it was not until the 1920s that the property became the home of Michael and Christine Luther King, who gave birth to their son, the future Martin Luther King Jr, on the premises in 1929.
King lived in the modest home for the first 12 years of his life and it remained in his family as a rental property until his assassination in 1968, when plans were made to renovate it into a house museum dedicated to his life. Today, the museum has been incorporated as part of the Georgia National Historic Park.
Though little known during her own lifetime, Emily Dickinson has posthumously become one of the most celebrated American poets of the 19th century. Born to prominent parents in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickens lived largely as a recluse, very seldom venturing beyond the bounds of her family home.
Today, Dickinson’s homestead where she lived from 1855 until her death in 1886, and the adjoining house belonging to her brother Austin have been turned into a house museum and a US National Historic Landmark, which can be found on the National Register of Historic Places.
The celebrated author of children’s classics such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain was a writer, humourist and essayist.
Though he was born in Florida, raised in Missouri and served as a riverboat captain on the Mississippi River – Twain actually penned these novels up north in Hartford, Connecticut.
Twain built his three-storey family residence in 1874 for £31,500-£35,400 ($40k-$45k) – that's £865,800-£944,500 ($1.1m-$1.2m) in today's money – in the classic Victorian Gothic style. The 25-room house is now open to the public as a museum.
The long-term home and primary plantation of founding father and third President Thomas Jefferson, Monticello is situated just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Jefferson inherited the land from his father at the age of 21 and went on to develop it, using the labour of hundreds of enslaved people, into a 5,000-acre (2,023ha) plantation of tobacco, wheat and mixed crops.
The main house is constructed of brick in a neo-classical style inspired by the designs of the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Today, the property has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Landmark and is open to visitors.
Barbara Hepworth was an English artist and sculptor associated with the modernist movement. Her long-term studio in St Ives, Cornwall, was purchased by the artist in 1949 and served as her home and workspace for 26 years until Hepworth died in a fire on the premises in 1975.
The studio was opened to the public by her family a year later and has been transformed into a public gallery and sculpture garden, displaying some of Hepworth’s most famous works, though it has been preserved almost entirely as the artist left it.
One of the most famous musical groups of all time, the Beatles changed the face of Rock and Roll forever when they crashed into the spotlight in the 1960s. But who were John, Paul, George and Ringo before they became The Beatles? Well, visitors can now explore two of the famous group members’ Liverpool childhood homes to see the very environments that shaped future stars John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney.
The two homes situated less than a mile from each other – Lennon's Mendips (pictured) and McCartney's social housing at 20 Forthlin Road – are now owned and operated by the National Trust. The properties offer visitors an exclusive glimpse into the spaces where the band met and composed some of their earliest songs.
Situated near Oyster Bay on the North Shore of Long Island, Sagamore Hill was the private residence of the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, from 1885 until his death in 1919. Roosevelt commissioned the Queen Anne-style house from New York City architectural firm Lamb & Rich in 1884, and dubbed it ‘Sagamore’, a Native American Algonquin word meaning 'chieftain'.
During Roosevelt’s presidency (1901-1909), the property also became known as the Summer White House, where Roosevelt would host foreign dignitaries on diplomatic visits. Today, the 23-room house is part of the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, which includes the Theodore Roosevelt Museum.
This stately residence in Lenox, Massachusetts, was once the home of the American author Edith Wharton, who designed the house and grounds herself to resemble the 17th-century Belton House in England. Like many prominent New Yorkers, Wharton liked retreating to the tranquil Berkshires during the summer season and in 1902, she commissioned architect Ogden Codman Jr to bring her vision to life.
With its fieldstone foundation, white stucco exterior, dark green shutters and wide stone terrace, The Mount became Wharton’s primary residence until 1911. It later served as a dormitory for a girls' school and as the site for the theatre group Shakespeare & Company. Today, the house is a cultural centre and historic house museum.
Third place in our ranking, Casa Museo Guayasamín was once the home of Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamín, who was celebrated for his cubist-style works depicting the people of Ecuador. The artist lived at the property during the final years of his life at the end of the last millennium, after which it was transformed into a house museum.
Casa Museo Guayasamín contains Guayasamín’s own art collection, comprised of pre-Columbian, colonial and contemporary Ecuadorian art, as well as an assortment of objects gathered from around the world, and of course a display of the artist’s own work.
Coming in at number two, but perhaps the most famous build by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater epitomises Wright’s approach to design – to harmonise architectural form with its function and with the natural world. To this end, the unique home sits perched over a waterfall on the Bear Run stream in southwestern Pennsylvania and was built between 1935 and 1937 as a summer retreat for a wealthy local department store owner and his wife.
Made primarily from reinforced concrete, locally quarried stone, steel and plate glass, the home is comprised of three storeys and numerous terraces all cantilevered out from a central chimney. Today the property has been converted into a museum, which attracts thousands of visitors each year.
But what did travellers rate the top historical home to visit?
Voted number one on AllClear's list of the world's best historical homes is The Breakers, a Gilded Age mansion in the elite summer retreat of Newport, Rhode Island.
The Breakers was commissioned by prominent New York tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt II in 1893 and was complete in 1895. The Renaissance Revival-style mansion was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and comprises 70 rooms over an enormous 138,300 square feet (12,850sqm).
The largest and most opulent of the Newport 'summer cottages', the mansion was lavishly decorated in the European style, designed to host and impress society’s most elite members. Today, it is also Rhode Island’s most popular attraction.
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