Old State Capitol

Mark Twain piloted steamboats past this bluff in the 1850s and loathed the sight of it: "It is pathetic ... that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things ... should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place." The insult only increased its fame. The building had been designed by New York architect James H. Dakin after the state legislature decided in 1846 to move the seat of government from New Orleans to Baton Rouge—a city of 2,269 people facing down the fourth-largest metropolis in the United States. Representatives from other parts of Louisiana feared a concentration of power. Baton Rouge donated a $20,000 parcel of land atop a bluff facing the Mississippi in 1847, and Dakin gave them a Neo-Gothic medieval-style castle instead of the standard national Capitol knockoff most states commissioned. By 1859 it was featured favorably in De Bow's Review, the most prestigious periodical in the antebellum South. In 1862, after Union Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans, the seat of government retreated from Baton Rouge. Union forces used the castle first as a prison, then as a garrison for African-American troops under General Culver Grover. The building caught fire twice while used as a garrison, leaving Louisiana's capitol a gutted shell. By 1882 architect William A. Freret had rebuilt it completely, installing the spiral staircase and stained glass dome that define the interior now. The legislature met here until 1932, when it was abandoned for the new Louisiana State Capitol building. Restored in the 1990s, it now houses the Museum of Political History—exhibits on Louisiana's governors, original gubernatorial ballots, an interactive gallery featuring figures including Huey P. Long. A theatrical production called "The Ghost of the Castle" brings visitors face to face with Sarah Morgan Dawson, a young Baton Rouge resident who loved the castle and wrote about it in her Civil War diary. Admission is free. The staircase and dome are reason enough to go.