Tender to town. I stepped ashore into a place founded in 1639, one of America's oldest cities, where the Town Statutes of 1641 first established religious liberty in the New World. That ancient heritage felt distant, though, as I walked toward the Gilded Age mansions that now define this harbor.

The Cliff Walk became my path between two worlds: the Atlantic crashing wild and eternal on one side, and on the other, the grandest "summer cottages" ever built. Between 1870 and 1910, the Vanderbilts, Astors, and their peers transformed this coastline into a monument to American wealth. I toured The Breakers first — Cornelius Vanderbilt II's seventy-room masterpiece, completed between 1893 and 1895, where every surface gleamed with imported marble and gold leaf. Excess barely describes it.

Marble House stood nearby, William K. Vanderbilt's $11 million gift to his wife Alva, finished in 1892. Then Rosecliff, built in 1902 by Theresa Fair Oelrichs and designed by Stanford White — more restrained, somehow, though still palatial. I learned that Château-sur-Mer predated them all, built in 1852 before the Vanderbilts arrived, a quieter testament to earlier fortunes.

The Newport Historical Society began preserving these estates in 1945, saving them from decay and developers. Now they stand as open museums, inviting us to walk through rooms where America's industrial barons once hosted elaborate parties while their yachts bobbed in the harbor below. Lunch at Brick Alley Pub brought me back to the present, then I drove to Castle Hill for sunset, watching the light fade over the same waters that brought Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson here seeking freedom centuries before the mansions rose.