If you love history, one of the coolest things you can do is visit the ACTUAL homes of historically famous people and walk the very floors they did — it’s the closest thing you get to time travel without a plutonium-packed DeLorean!
So, here are 28 of the most must-visit historical homes in the world (I’ve been lucky to visit a few of these, but hope to see them all before I’m pushing daisies):
In Chawton, Hampshire, you can visit the 17th-century cottage where Jane Austen lived the last eight years of her life, writing the classic books Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion.
Inside, you can explore rooms — like Austen’s bedroom seen below — which are filled with her personal artifacts.
You can even see her writing table! (Such a small table to write so many classics on.)
In Chanhassen, Minnesota — just outside Minneapolis — you can visit Paisley Park, the 65,000-square-foot complex where Prince lived and recorded music from 1987 through his death in 2016.
There’s now a museum there dedicated to all things Prince, including rooms named for the movies/albums Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge.
This room, meanwhile, looks 100% like what you imagine Prince’s home would look like:
In Coyoacán, a historic neighborhood in Mexico City, you can visit Frida Kahlo’s Blue House (La Casa Azul). It’s where she was born, painted many of her most famous works, and spent her final years.
Inside you’ll find her corsets and prosthetics, personal diaries, and rooms she shared with her husband and collaborator Diego Rivera.
You can even see her artist’s studio with her wheelchair still at the easel!
Before he was president, Abraham Lincoln was just a lawyer and dad living in a modest two-story house in Springfield, Illinois. That home — now a National Historic Site — is open to the public, and it’s one of the most moving places you can visit as an American.
The home has been meticulously restored to look exactly as it did in the 1860s, complete with original furnishings, wallpaper, and floors that creak under your feet like they probably did under Lincoln’s. The surrounding neighborhood has also been preserved, so you can even walk the same sidewalks Lincoln did!
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Also, in Washington, DC, you can visit the back bedroom of the Petersen House, a boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln died after being shot on April 14, 1865.
How’s this for wild? You can visit the home of Joan of Arc in Domrémy-la-Pucelle, France. Joan of Arc was born in the four-room, stone house around 1412.
Here’s what it looks like on the inside. (Also worth mentioning: Next to the house are interactive exhibits that delve into Joan’s life and legacy.)
In Arles, France, you can visit the hospital where van Gogh was treated after he infamously cut off his ear in 1888. He spent 53 weeks there, and its courtyard garden inspired many of the 100+ pieces he created onsite.
Visitors can walk the gardens and then take a look at the room where van Gogh stayed — and painted.
One more on van Gogh — in Cuesmes, Belgium, you can visit the house where van Gogh lived from August 1879 to October 1880, a pivotal period in his life as he transitioned from a preacher to an artist.
8.
French painter Claude Monet
Claude Monet’s house in Giverny, France is a pastel-pink dream — a lot like his paintings — and where he spent the second half of his life painting obsessively, especially in the gardens he designed himself.
Here, my friends, are those gardens:
Inside, Monet’s bright kitchen, cozy salon, and blue sitting room are all restored to his exact tastes.
9.
Paul McCartney (the only living person on this list…long live, Paul!)
If you go to Liverpool, you’re likely there because of the Beatles, and one of the coolest things you can do is visit John and Paul’s childhood homes! Below is Paul’s home at 20 Forthlin Road, where he lived from age 13 through becoming world-famous.
In the next two photos you can see Paul recently visiting his old home while filming Carpool Karaoke. This is the kitchen.
And here he’s playing “When I’m Sixty-Four” in the very room that he wrote the song at age 16! I’ve been to this one, and on the tour they said Paul and John would often hunker down in this room and write songs like “She Loves You.”
You can also visit the home John Lennon grew up in with his Aunt Mimi. Strawberry Fields (then a children’s home run by the Salvation Army) is visible from the backyard, which is interesting to know, considering how it inspired him later.
This place was also a thrill to visit. Here’s the living room as it looked when young John lived there.
And here is his bedroom, complete with posters of Brigitte Bardot (his teenage celebrity crush) and Elvis Presley.
You can even see the toilet where John undoubtedly bid adieu to some beans on toast, LOL.
11.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Memphis, Tennessee, you can visit Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered on the balcony. It is now part of the National Civil Rights Museum, which was built in and around the motel.
The civil rights giant often stayed in Room 306 when he was in Memphis, and his trip in early April 1968 was no different. Following his assassination, his room was left untouched.
In the market town of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, you can visit the very home that Shakespeare grew up in!
Shakespeare was born here in 1564 and spent much of his youth in this half-timbered house, which doubled as his father’s glove-making workshop. The building has been carefully preserved with original 16th-century features intact.
I’ve visited this one — here my wife and I are in the garden behind the home — and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
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Just a few minutes away is the picturesque cottage that Anne Hathaway — Shakespeare’s wife — grew up in.
The home is over 500 years old and features original furniture, cozy timbered rooms, and nine acres of blooming gardens. (We went here also, and it’s a must-see, too!)
You can visit Johnny Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, Arkansas. The Man in Black lived in the five-room farmhouse from age 3 until his high school graduation in 1950, and it has been restored to be like it was in the 1930s, complete with original furnishings and artifacts provided by the Cash family.
Here’s some of the charming interior…I’m guessing Johnny plunked away on that piano a bit, huh?
In New Delhi, you can visit the 12-bedroom mansion where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and where his tragic assassination took place on Jan. 30, 1948. Today, it stands as both a memorial and a multimedia museum dedicated to Gandhi and his life.
Gandhi’s bedroom has been preserved exactly as it was at the time of his assassination. In it you can see his walking stick, glasses, spinning wheel, sandals, utensils, a rough stone for washing, a simple mattress on the floor, and a low wooden desk.
This one isn’t a home, but it deserves a spot on this list. In Dearborn, Michigan, at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, you can visit the actual Montgomery City Lines bus (#2857) where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on Dec. 1, 1955, igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The bus (seen below) has been restored meticulously to its 1955 condition.
What makes this experience unforgettable? Visitors can actually board the bus, walk the narrow aisle, and even sit in the very seat Rosa Parks occupied that day — just as President Obama is below.
If you’re in Boston, you can visit the home of Paul Revere — you know, the guy whose midnight ride warned the British were coming! Located in Boston’s historic North End, the Paul Revere House is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston (built around 1680).
I’ve been to this one and I have to say, I was impressed with how livable his place seemed for the 17th century. Like, look at this room below. Not so bad, right?
Located in Memphis, Tennessee, Graceland was Elvis Presley’s mansion from 1957 until his death in 1977 — and it’s exactly as over-the-top as you’d expect from the King. The “Jungle Room” alone (green shag carpet on the floor and ceiling) is worth the price of admission.
Visitors can see Elvis’s private jets (yes, plural), a car museum packed with Cadillacs and Harley-Davidsons, and the Meditation Garden where he and several family members are buried.
In Rome, you can visit the House of Augustus on Palatine Hill — the home of Rome’s first emperor, Octavian (later Augustus), who lived here from around 30 BC until his death in AD 14. It was only opened to the public in 2014 after major excavation and conservation efforts.
Inside the restored rooms, you’ll find some of the best-preserved frescoes from ancient Rome.
If you’ve ever wanted to literally step into a Victorian novel, you need to visit 48 Doughty Street, London. There you’ll find the Charles Dickens Museum located in the the author’s former home.
Dickens lived here in the early 1830s while writing Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. You can see the actual desk where Dickens wrote some of his most iconic work, his handwritten letters, and even the couch where he died (seriously).
How does it make you feel that you can visit the final home of Sigmund Freud? Located in Hampstead, England, Freud lived and worked there from 1938 until his death in 1939.
Inside you can see the iconic psychoanalytic couch on which he treated patients — beautifully preserved as the centerpiece of his study.
In Key West, Florida, you can visit the Spanish Colonial‑style house where Hemingway lived and wrote during the 1930s.
The home was built in 1851, and dozens of six‑toed cats — descendants of Hemingway’s beloved Snow White — roam the garden.
Classics written here include: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and To Have and Have Not.
23.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In Salzburg, Austria, you can step inside Mozart’s birthplace — a modest townhouse where the legendary composer was born on Jan. 27, 1756 and lived until age 17.
This three‑story museum features rooms filled with historical furnishings, portraits, handwritten letters, and even Mozart’s childhood instruments — including a violin and clavichord that the prodigy played as a kid.
In Hibbing, Minnesota, you can visit the childhood home of Bob Dylan, where he grew up with the less star-friendly name of Robert Zimmerman. It’s an unassuming two-story house on a quiet street, but for Dylan fans, it’s a holy site.
Inside you can imagine yourself living back in the ’50s and ’60s, and see the living room where he practiced piano and his bedroom (below) where he played records.
In Soweto, South Africa, you can visit the house where the anti-apartheid activist and former South African president Nelson Mandela lived from 1946 to 1962, before his arrest and decades-long imprisonment.
The home is now a national heritage site and museum, offering a powerful, personal look at the life of South Africa’s most iconic freedom fighter.
26.
Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
If you’ve ever read War and Peace or Anna Karenina, you might want to visit Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s estate and now a hauntingly preserved museum, located about 120 miles south of Moscow.
You’ll see his writing desk (very cool), and be able to walk the grounds, which are peaceful, forested, and deeply connected to the Russian countryside he so often wrote about.
27.
Ming and Qing Dynasties
Located in Beijing, this massive complex known as the Palace Museum (aka the Forbidden City) was home to 24 emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties over nearly 500 years — including big names like Emperor Kangxi, the longest-reigning emperor in Chinese history, and Empress Dowager Cixi, who basically ruled China from behind the curtain for decades.
The complex spans over 180 acres and contains 980 surviving buildings — all ornately detailed. The Forbidden City was off-limits to the public for centuries (hence the name), but today it’s one of the most visited museums in the world.
28.
George Frideric Handel and Jimi Hendrix
Let’s end on something totally unexpected. In London, you can visit the Handel & Hendrix museum, which preserves the homes of baroque composer George Frideric Handel (who lived there from 1723–1759) and rock legend Jimi Hendrix (who lived there from 1968–1969), which rest side by side. Yes, Handel and Hendrix (separated by time) were next-door neighbors!
Next, you can see Hendrix’s bedroom, featuring original furniture, a guitar, turntable, and treasure trove of personal items including posters and records.
Know any cool places like this people can visit? Let us know in the comments or in the anonymous form below and maybe we’ll do a sequel post!
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