City: New Orleans, LA

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (225) 545-2730, (866) 527-6884

Address: 31025 Hwy. 1

Description: If Southern grandeur has a name, it’s Nottoway. That in no small part was due to the great wealth of prosperous sugar planter John Hampden Randolph, who in 1849 commissioned what today is the largest and certainly one of the finest homes in the entire South. Nottoway, simply put, is an American castle whose Italianate and Greek Revival architecture and 22 enormous columns epitomize antebellum luxury and magnificence. Randolph also saw to it that his splendid 53,000-square-foot home with 64 rooms brought innovative and unique features to the South, including indoor plumbing, gas lighting, and coal fireplaces.Ten years after construction began, Nottoway was completed to accommodate Randolph’s 11 children. Situated on a 7,000-acre sugar plantation, this aristocratic house, with its intricate lacy plaster friezework, hand-painted Dresden porcelain doorknobs, hand-carved marble mantels, Corinthian columns of cypress wood, crystal chandeliers, and 65-foot Grand White Ballroom, was saved from total destruction during the Civil War by a kindly Northern gunboat officer who had once been a guest of the Randolphs. The current owner, Paul Ramsey of Sydney, Australia, continues an authentic restoration begun in 1980.Guided tours are daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $20 for adults and $6 for children age six to 12; children under five free. A restaurant and overnight accommodations in one of 13 guest rooms, each with private bath and entrance, are available. Room rate includes bottle of sherry; morning wake-up call with sweet potato muffins, orange juice, and coffee; plantation breakfast; and guided tour of the mansion. To reach Nottoway take I–10 west and exit at LA 22. Turn left on LA 70 and follow the signs across the Sunshine Bridge, 14 miles north through Donaldsonville on LA 1.