Back in Victorian days, it was all the rage to build quaint little cottages (read: over-the-top ginormous mansions) to summer in the Berkshires. A literary and theater scene sprang up to entertain the rich, and at the center of it all was the novelist Edith Wharton, who made her home a rambling palace full of ornate architecture and furnishings. While most of her original possessions and furniture is long since gone, the house itself has been restored to its Victorian glory, and you can hear all about the glamorous (and scandalous) live of her and her contemporaries on entertaining tours. The highlight, however, are the wonderful gardens outside the mansion, which give Versailles a run for their money. (Younger kids will love just running around picking flowers and chasing butterflies, save the house tour for tweens and teens with a love of history or a Jane Austen complex.)