Newport’s most celebrated – and showiest – Gilded Age mansion in Newport was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1895 and reflects the unimaginable wealth of the Vanderbilt family. The Italian Renaissance “summer cottage” has 70 rooms, including a grand three-story dining room, and was built using imported French and Italian marble and alabaster.

Ceiling paintings, mosaics, marble columns, fine wood paneling, and carved stucco decorate its rooms lavishly and ostentatiously, as was intended by the Vanderbilts, who never risked being outdone by their wealthy competitors.

While the glitz and showy grandeur of the public rooms where the Vanderbilts lived and entertained are impressive, my favorite place to go in The Breakers is below the stairs, in the cavernous kitchen and pantries. Shining copper stockpots stand on the yards-long stove, and dozens of copper sauce pans and frypans hang from a rack above a marble work island large enough for rolling a dozen side-by-side pie crusts. Credit the Vanderbilts for giving the kitchen staff a well-lighted workspace; a second bank of windows brings more daylight into the high-ceilinged room.