Nemours Mansion and Gardens, located in Wilmington, Delaware, is a 300-acre estate comprised of the Nemours Mansion, flourishing gardens, and magnificent fountains. Nemours has completed a $39,000,000 restoration and re-opened on May 1, 2008 with a new visitor center building built in order to provide visitor reception, ticketing, toilets and a film theater chronicling the Nemours story and exhibits. Reconstruction period ran for over a three years utilizing world-class conservators and craftspeople who worked on excavations, landscaped the formal gardens, drained and repaired the 800,000 gallon reflecting pool, replaced electrical systems, and refurbished paintings, statues, furniture and tapestries.

Alfred I. DuPont built Nemours for his second wife Alicia Bradford Maddox DuPont between 1909 and 1910. The Mansion is an excellent example of modified Louis XVI French chateau designed by Carrere and Hastings of New York City and was built by Smyth and Son of Wilmington, Delaware. The mansion has 102 rooms and is furnished with fine period antiques, rare oriental rugs, tapestries and paintings dating back as far as the 15th century. The garden?s design was influenced by Mr. duPont's many trips to Europe and are beautifully landscaped with a working carillon tower, natural woodlands and extensive formal French gardens. Inspired by Versailles, the formal garden is mostly French neoclassical with Italian and English touches stretching a quarter-mile along one grand axis, from the front door of the house to the Temple of Love in the distance. The garden also features a terrace north of the house from which steps descend to a reflecting pool. Across the water there is a parterre and a colonnade leading on to a sunken garden.

Visitors will be able to see the house and grounds through guided tours only which take a minimum of two hours ? all rooms on three floors followed by a bus tour of the gardens. The tours are excellent and the tour guides are very knowledgeable about the home, its furnishings and the life of the duPonts. Visitors will discover how life is on a grand scale living at the beginning of the 20th century.