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An opulent Italian-style villa on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville, Belmont Mansion is the largest house museum in Tennessee and a remarkable monument to the wealth and ambition of one of the antebellum South's most formidable women. Built in the 1850s for Adelicia Acklen, the lavish mansion and its surrounding pleasure grounds were among the grandest in the region before the Civil War. The house was created as a summer residence by Adelicia, a twice-widowed heiress of extraordinary fortune, and reflected her taste for European grandeur. Designed in the Italianate villa style and eventually encompassing dozens of rooms, the estate once included elaborate gardens, a conservatory, an art gallery, a bowling alley, a bear house and even a small zoo, all sustained by the labour of enslaved people. During the Civil War, after Nashville fell to Union forces, the mansion was occupied as a headquarters by a Union general, and it stood near the decisive battle that effectively ended the conflict in the region. After the family sold the estate, it became the anchor of a planned neighbourhood and later the heart of a women's college that grew into the present university, which now surrounds it. Restored and furnished with period and original pieces, the mansion preserves elaborate plasterwork, marble statuary and richly decorated rooms. For visitors the mansion offers guided tours of its sumptuous interior and grounds, with admission tickets, typically lasting around an hour. It sits on the university campus close to the lively Belmont and Hillsboro neighbourhoods of Nashville, reachable by car, and offers a vivid glimpse of antebellum wealth and the complex history that produced it. The grounds once held an art gallery, a conservatory, a bowling alley and even a small zoo, a measure of the extravagance of its builder, the formidable heiress Adelicia Acklen. Restored with elaborate plasterwork, marble statuary and richly furnished rooms, the mansion now sits at the heart of a university campus, offering visitors a vivid glimpse of antebellum opulence and the complex life of the woman who created it.