Winterthur, Delaware

For my mom's birthday earlier this year, we promised her a trip to Winterthur, a house museum and garden in Delaware, to see the Costuming The Crown exhibit and walk through the gardens.  We had been there a few years prior to see the Downton Abbey costume exhibit, so we were excited to return, and a couple weeks ago, we visited on a perfect Saturday.


Winterthur is the 175-room former home of Henry Francis du Pont; for more information about the estate, click here.

We purchased timed tickets to take the house tour.  Small groups are led through a portion of the house every half hour.  The house is deceptively large; it was built in stages over generations, finally ending with 175 rooms over several stories.  Since you only see a small portion of the house, it's kind of hard to gauge how big it actually is, but it is sprawling and cleverly built into the terrain - at one point, you're on the fifth floor, but can walk out a door onto a lawn.

 

After we finished the house tour, we went over to the Costuming The Crown exhibit in one of the wings.  We've all watched and loved the show, so it was really neat to the see actual costumes the actors wore, oftentimes next to the real-life pictures that served as inspiration.  My niece loved seeing all the pretty dresses!

After the exhibit, we wandered out into the gardens, starting at the reflecting pool.  From here, you can kind of see the scale of the house!

Next we went to the Enchanted Forest section of the gardens; my niece loved this area and didn't want to leave, especially because she could have a tea party with grandma there!

After lunch, we took a tram ride around the perimeter of the garden; I love this part of the tour because you can see all different parts of the grounds; the guide talks about different plants and trees and also what the land was historically  used for in various sections (for example, there used to be a dairy on the property).  You can also walk the many paths through the garden.

We really enjoyed our second trip to Winterthur; I would highly recommend if you're ever in the area that you make it a point to stop there!