This is where the Gilded Age came to play. The "summer cottages" on the cliffs aren't cottages at all but Italian palazzos and French châteaux built when families named Vanderbilt, Astor, and Belmont competed to outdo one another. Today their estates draw visitors from around the world, but Newport offers more than mansion tours. You're surrounded by jazz drifting across the harbor on summer nights, the briny smell of raw bars shucking the day's catch, and the Cliff Walk tracing the rocky coast with Atlantic spray on one side and a century of architectural ambition on the other.

The mansions deliver on every promise of Gilded Age grandeur. Step inside The Breakers and the scale hits you first with 70 rooms of Italian Renaissance excess across more than 130,000 square feet, and ceilings so high your footsteps echo on the marble. Marble House cost $11 million to build in 1892 (roughly $400 million today), and when exploring its gold-leafed rooms you can almost smell the old money and furniture polish. Rosecliff's ballroom, the largest in Newport, hosted scenes from The Great Gatsby, still feeling like a party waiting to happen. Eleven of these estates are open for tours through the Preservation Society. Each takes 45-60 minutes; most visitors find two or three mansions make a full day.

The Cliff Walk connects the mansions to the sea. This 3.5-mile path runs from Memorial Boulevard to Bailey's Beach, tracing the shoreline behind the great estates. With the Atlantic always on your right, salt mist cools your skin on warm days from the waves working against the rocks below. The northern half is paved, while the southern section turns to rough granite that requires some scrambling. Sunset is the magic hour, when the mansion windows catch fire and the ocean turns copper. In winter, you might catch surfers riding the last waves of the day to beaches dotted with snow.

Downtown Newport centers on Thames Street, where the smell of fried clams and melted butter drifts from restaurants packed into colonial-era buildings. The Mooring serves seafood with direct harbor views. Oysters cold and briny, lobster rolls split and buttered. Clarke Cooke House has been pouring drinks in the same creaking wooden building since the 1700s. Fort Adams State Park hosts the Folk and Jazz Festivals on consecutive weekends in late July and early August, the music floating across the water to boats anchored in the harbor. And Ocean Drive loops 10 miles along the coast, passing Brenton Point State Park where the wind never stops and the views reward every mile.