Highlands North Carolina

1. Asheville

Western North Carolina is the most geographically diverse state and is thus one of the richest travel experiences. Asheville, some 125 miles of Charlotte, is the gateway to the region.

Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the confluence of French Broad and Swannanoa River, it was settled in 1794 by John Barton, who was originally named "Morristown" after Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution, but was later changed in honor of Governor Samuel Ashe. With the arrival of the railway in 1880 Western North Carolina, he had developed a market for cattle and tobacco, and today is the economic center and leisure in Western North Carolina and a base for touring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park region and Cherokee Indian culture.

Second only to Miami's art deco architecture, Asheville offers many interesting sites.

The Basilica of St. Lawrence, for example, developed jointly by the Spanish architect Rafael Gustavia and Richard Smith-Sharp is a Spanish Renaissance design in brick and tile with a self-supporting dome and the vault Catalan. It was completed in 1908.

The Early Life of Thomas Wolfe, Asheville famous novelist, can be gained from visiting the 29-room Queen Anne-style house where he grew up. He is now a designated historic site status.

Nucleus Arts, Asheville is the culture of painters, sculptures, and potters, who honed their craft in the Arts District in Riverside.

Asheville's sight and all of North Carolina's most famous and most visited, however, is the Biltmore Estate. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted (New York, Central Park fame), the 255-room French Renaissance chateau, which necessitated the construction period of five years during the height of the Golden Age and some 1,000 workers, was the result of George Washington Vanderbilt travels to the region in the early 1880s and his decision to have a summer home, said the castles along the valley of France the Loire, built it. Today it is U.S. largest private residence and is still partially used for this purpose by the descendants of Vanderbilt.

The Vanderbilt, one of the wealthiest families and most prominent of the country led by Cornelius Vanderbilt, had amassed their fortune through railroad, business and philanthropic activities. Handover to the second generation, led by William Henry Vanderbilt, he was able to perpetuate its success, while William Henry was himself the father of the third generation, having four son. George Washington Vanderbilt, one of them was the least active in the development of family affairs.

Opening Biltmore House on Christmas Eve in 1895, he had engaged in scientific agriculture, livestock and forestry, and brought his wife, Edith Stuyvessant Dresser, then three years later. Her only daughter, Cornelia, was born in the house in 1900 and thirty years later, he was open to the public.

The massive house, accessible by both escorted tours and without escort, offers an overview of this centenary, opulent lifestyle. The lobby, the gateway to that time had been the same access point used by the Vanderbilts and their guests and any director of the conservatory glass roof. Perhaps the grandest room on the ground floor is the banquet hall. Stretching seven-story wooden ceiling, it has large tables, three fireplaces, Flemish tapestries from the 1500s, and a mountain 1916 Skinner pipe organ.