Asheville's standing attractions: a field guide

The big one: Biltmore

Biltmore Estate is the reason a lot of people first come to Asheville: America's largest home, George Vanderbilt's 250-room château on 8,000 acres just south of downtown, with formal gardens, a winery, and the Antler Hill Village farm and barn. It reopened after a brief Helene closure and runs year-round. Tickets are timed and not cheap — buy ahead online, and budget the better part of a day if you want the house and the grounds.

Craft, gardens, and grand rooms

• The Folk Art Center (Blue Ridge Parkway, Milepost 382) — the Southern Highland Craft Guild's gallery and shop, with live craft demos and museum-grade Appalachian work for sale. Free to enter.
• The North Carolina Arboretum — 65 acres of cultivated gardens and ten miles of trails just south of town, with a standout bonsai collection.
• The Grove Park Inn — the 1913 stone resort above town; even if you're not a guest, the Sunset Terrace view and the holiday National Gingerbread Competition are local rituals.

Architecture and history downtown

• The Basilica of St. Lawrence — a 1909 Rafael Guastavino masterpiece with a self-supporting tile dome, free to step into off Haywood Street.
• The Thomas Wolfe Memorial — the boyhood boardinghouse behind Look Homeward, Angel, a state historic site downtown.
• The downtown core itself — one of the country's best intact collections of Art Deco architecture; the Urban Trail (in our downtown guide) walks you through it.