A mansions day from 61 Church

• One house: The Breakers. Book a timed slot before you leave home.
• Two houses: The Breakers plus Marble House, on the combined ticket, which is cheaper than buying them apart.
• Allow 90 minutes each, including the trip between houses. Two is a comfortable day; three is a long one.
• No time? Walk Bellevue Avenue and the Cliff Walk. You see the houses from the gate and from the cliff for free.

Times to remember: The Breakers and Marble House run 9 to 5 with last admission at 4. Rosecliff's last admission is 3.

• The Breakers, $32 adult and $14 for ages 6 to 12 (free under 6). This one is timed: you pick a date and an entry time.
• The Breakers + 1, $45 adult and $16 for ages 6 to 12. The Breakers at your chosen time plus one other open house, bought whenever you like. This is the right ticket for most people.
• One Property, $25 adult and $10 for ages 6 to 12. Any house except the Breakers: Marble House, Rosecliff, Chateau-sur-Mer, Kingscote, Isaac Bell House or Green Animals Topiary Garden. No time slot needed.
• The Elms Experience, $35 adult and $20 for ages 2 to 12. A new timed, multi-sensory version of the house. It opens November 16 and replaces the old self-guided visit, so advance purchase is strongly recommended.
• Access Pass, $75. Unlimited general admission to every open house for a full year, and you do not need a timed reservation at the Breakers. Only worth it if you are staying a long time or coming back.

Everything except the Breakers and the Elms is an open ticket that stays good for a year, so you can buy them on the day and decide later. Prices above are the Preservation Society's current published rates and do change, so check the tickets page before you go. If you end up buying a membership within seven days, what you paid for tickets counts toward it.

Cornelius Vanderbilt II's 70-room Italian Renaissance palace, built 1893 to 1895 after a fire, is the flagship and the one room-by-room visit that most people find worth the money. Start here, first thing, because the house fills up by mid-morning.

• Entry is timed. Tickets are for a specific date and time and the slots run out, so buy ahead. You can change a date and time online from the link in your confirmation email.
• The back and south terraces are closed for restoration until November 2026. The gardens and back lawn stay open, so you still get the ocean-side view that made the house famous.
• The audio tour is free with admission and it is the whole visit: family members, servants and their children telling you about the house in their own words. Download the Newport Mansions app before you arrive and bring earbuds, or you will be buying them at the desk. There is a separate children's version.
• Strollers cannot go inside, and children under 16 must be with an adult. The house is partially accessible with an elevator in service, but the third floor and the underground tour are not.
• Parking is free on site. The Breakers is seven minutes by car from the house.

Marble House (1892) was built by William Vanderbilt as a 39th birthday present for his wife Alva, and it is the smaller, more concentrated version of the same show: marble halls, gilded ceilings, and the red-and-gold Chinese Tea House sitting on the cliff edge next door. The audio tour is Alva's own voice describing a house she called "like a fourth child to me," and her story — the social weapon of it, the divorce, the suffrage work — is the best thing about the visit. Allow an hour to an hour and a half. It is partially accessible with an elevator.

Rosecliff (1902, Stanford White) is a different kind of visit. It is lightly furnished on purpose, so the architecture and the rotating art exhibitions on the second floor take the room. What you come for is the heart-shaped staircase and the largest ballroom in Newport, which its owner Tessie Oelrichs used as a roller skating rink before her first party. It has been used as a film set more than a dozen times, including The Great Gatsby and True Lies. Open daily from late June to November 1 with last admission at 3, and an exhibition marking the American semiquincentennial is included with admission through November 1.

The Preservation Society keeps eleven properties, but most of them shut for the season in the fall. Check the operating schedule for your date before planning around one.

• Chateau-sur-Mer (1852): High Victorian wallpaper, stencilling and furniture, and the most palatial house in Newport before the Vanderbilts arrived. Temporarily closed; reopens November 21 and runs Saturdays and Sundays through January 3.
• Kingscote (1841): the Gothic Revival house that started Newport's cottage boom. Closed for the season.
• Isaac Bell House (1883): McKim, Mead and White, one of the country's best shingle-style houses, barely furnished so you can see the design. Closed for the season.
• Chepstow (1860): a family house kept the way one family kept it. Closed for the season.
• Green Animals Topiary Garden: seven acres above Narragansett Bay with more than 80 clipped topiary animals, at their best May to October. It is about 30 minutes north of Newport, so it is its own trip rather than a Bellevue Avenue walk.
• Hunter House (about 1748): Georgian Colonial on the waterfront, and the first building the Preservation Society saved back in 1945. Closed for the season, and street parking only.
• The Breakers Stable and Carriage House: the society's carriage collection, open seasonally and for special programs.

In late October that leaves the Breakers, Marble House, Rosecliff until November 1, then the Elms Experience from November 16 and Chateau-sur-Mer at weekends from November 21. In summer everything is open and the choice is harder.

These are guide-led, capped at 10 to 12 people, and sold separately from general admission — so a house ticket does not get you in. Buy ahead; they are the first thing to sell out.

• Beneath The Breakers, about 60 minutes: the heating, electrical, plumbing, refrigeration and elevator systems that ran a 138,300-square-foot house in 1895. Underground, no natural light, sturdy shoes, not for children under 10. $25 non-member.
• The Breakers Third Floor Preservation in Progress, about 60 minutes: the private family rooms, opened to the public for the first time in the house's history, with the conservators' current work. 85 stairs up and 95 down, no elevator, not for children under 10. $25 non-member.
• The Elms Servant Life, about 75 minutes: third-floor staff quarters, the roof if the weather holds, kitchens, coal cellar, boiler and laundry. 120 stairs and no elevator, not for children under 8. $25 non-member.

• Walk the Cliff Walk. It runs behind most of the Bellevue Avenue houses, so you get the lawns, the cliffs and the ocean side of the buildings with no ticket at all. You cannot enter a house from the walk — the Breakers is a fence line away — but it is the best view of the whole Gilded Age project. See the beaches and Cliff Walk guide.
• Walk Bellevue Avenue itself. It is a public street, and the gates and lodges are open to a slow look. About half an hour on foot from The Elms to the Breakers.
• Newport residents get in free whenever the houses are open, with proof of residence, and Newport County residents were admitted free on November 14 and 15, 2026 for Newport County Days.
• Families with a valid EBT or WIC card pay $4 a person for regular admission, up to four people, when buying in person at a house.
• Children under 6 are free at the Breakers and at the One Property houses, and the audio tours — including the children's versions at the Breakers and Marble House — are included with admission.

From November 21, 2026 to January 3, 2027 the houses come back for the holidays: the Breakers and Marble House open daily, Chateau-sur-Mer at weekends, with close to 30 decorated trees and the 15-foot poinsettia tree in the Breakers' Great Hall, made of 150 plants. Daytime entry is by the normal tickets above. Everything is closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, and closes at 2 on December 24.

Sparkling Lights at The Breakers (November 21 to December 27) is a half-mile outdoor path strung with lights, with music, and it includes the interior tour on the same visit. $45 for a non-member adult, timed, non-refundable and unchangeable, so buy it only once you are sure of the date.

The museum café, The Carriage House at The Elms, is open 11 to 5 with last seating at 4, but only to members and to people holding any Newport Mansions house ticket — a useful lunch stop between houses rather than a casual café.

For the tree lighting on the wharf, the decorated houses in holiday dress and a full December plan, see the Christmas in Newport guide.

The Breakers is seven minutes by car; Marble House and Rosecliff are also seven. Ripta's free Route 67 trolley links the mansions, the Cliff Walk and the Tennis Hall of Fame, so you can leave the car at the house. Measured times for every stop are on the activity map.

Parking is free on site at every Preservation Society property except Hunter House and the Breakers Stable and Carriage House, where it is street parking. The houses are close enough to walk between if the weather is good and your knees are willing.

• 9am, The Breakers. First timed slot of the day, audio tour on, about 90 minutes.
• Late morning, Marble House. Ten minutes away, no ticket queue, an hour to an hour and a half.
• Lunch on Bellevue or down at the waterfront, or the Carriage House café if you have a house ticket.
• Afternoon: Rosecliff for the ballroom and an exhibition, or the Cliff Walk from the Forty Steps if the weather is fine and you would rather see houses from the outside.
• Evening: walk back down to Thames Street for dinner. The houses close early; the town does not.

If it rains, swap the Cliff Walk for a third house, or for the specialty tour you have been tempted by — the underground one is the best thing here that most visitors never hear about.