The Breakers may be the grandest of Newport’s “summer cottages,” but its magic lies in the way individual spaces flow from refined interior opulence to sweeping Atlantic panoramas. Below you’ll find a fact-checked snapshot of seven signature locations—from the oceanside lawn to the gilded rooms where the Vanderbilts entertained America’s elite—so you can picture how each setting once functioned and why it still captivates visitors today.
Back Lawn
Landscape architect Ernest W. Bowditch had 13 ocean-front acres to play with, carving a quarter-mile serpentine path through ornamental shrubs, “outdoor rooms,” and exotic specimens like Blue Atlas cedars to give the Vanderbilts privacy and year-round color. The lawn falls gently to a 12-foot wrought-iron cliff fence, framing unbroken views of Easton Bay and the Atlantic that still make visitors gasp today.
Upper Loggia
Opening due east, the second-floor loggia functioned as the family’s breezy summer living room. Glass doors that overlook the Great Hall slide completely aside, turning the gallery into a cross-ventilated porch. The walls are faux-marble; above them a trompe-l’œil ceiling shows three striped canopies billowing against blue sky—more beach cabana than Renaissance palace.
Lower Loggia
Directly below, the lower loggia is finished like an Italian garden pavilion: a barrel vault sheathed in thousands of marble tesserae, with dolphins, garlands, and the Vanderbilt acorn worked into the design by European mosaicists. Even from here you can see the ocean on the horizon!
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Great Hall
Richard Morris Hunt enclosed what would have been an open Roman cortile, creating a cube 50 × 50 × 50 feet. Above each of the six doorways, sculptor Karl Bitter carved limestone groups—Galileo, Dante, Apollo, Mercury, Hunt, and Bitter himself—celebrating human achievement and reminding party-goers whose genius made the revels possible.
Gallery
The second-floor gallery wraps the staircase like a private museum corridor. A stained-glass ceiling by John La Farge (moved here in 1894 from the Vanderbilts’ Fifth-Avenue townhouse) bathes the space in opalescent light, while velvet portières embroidered to La Farge’s designs soften the stone below. Busts, Flemish tapestries, and portraits are showcased here, giving overnight guests an art preview en route to their suites.
Dining Room
At 2,400 sq ft, this is Newport’s largest formal dining room. A dozen rose-alabaster Corinthian columns ring the space, supporting a gilt cornice above a ceiling fresco of Aurora ushering in dawn on a four-horse chariot. A 34-seat oak table sat beneath twin Baccarat crystal chandeliers wired for both gas and the mansion’s early electricity; 22-carat gold leaf, fixed with rabbit-skin glue, made the walls shimmer in candlelight.
Music Room
Fabricated by Jules Allard & Sons in Paris, then shipped across the Atlantic like an enormous kit, the oval Music Room dazzles with silver-and-gold coffers, a Campan-marble fireplace, and an elliptical frieze listing great composers. It hosted recitals and masquerade balls in the Gilded Age.
Main Gates (pictured above as well)
The baroque wrought-iron gates on Ochre Point Avenue (30 feet tall and part of a 12-foot limestone fence) serve as the mansion’s literal and symbolic threshold. Removed in January 2025 for a $500,000 restoration that included sand-blasting, zinc thermal spray, and a marine-grade paint system, the two 5,600-pound leaves and their scroll-crowned pediments were craned back into place in May 2025, marking the project’s completion.
