Fodor's Expert Review Shadows-on-the-Teche

One of the South's best-known plantation homes was built on the bank of Bayou Teche using slave labor for the wealthy sugar planter David Weeks in 1834. In 1917 his descendant William Weeks Hall conducted one of the first historically conscious restorations of a plantation home, also preserving truckloads of documents that helped explain day-to-day life here for the Weeks family, as well as for many of the people they enslaved. The result is one of the most fascinating tours in Louisiana, taking place hourly, every day except Sundays. Weeks Hall willed the property to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1958, and each year the trust selects a different historical topic to emphasize. Surrounded by 2½ acres of lush gardens and moss-draped oaks, the two-story rose-hue house has white columns, exterior staircases sheltered in cabinet-like enclosures, and a pitched roof pierced by dormer windows. The furnishings are 85% original to the house.