3 Best Sights in The Southern Coast, Maine

The great American landscape painter created many of his best-known works in this seaside home between 1883 until his death in 1910. It's easy to see how this rocky, jagged peninsula might have been inspiring. The only way to get a look is on a tour with the Portland Museum of Art, which leads 2½-hour strolls through the historic property.

Also known as White Columns, this imposing Greek Revival mansion with Doric columns is furnished with the belongings of four generations of the Perkins-Nott family. From mid-July through mid-October, the 1853 house is open for guided tours and also serves as a gathering place for village walking tours. It is owned by the Kennebunkport Historical Society, which has several other historical buildings, including an old jail and schoolhouse, a mile away at 125–135 North Street.

Built in 1718, this waterfront home was remodeled in the 1760s by Jonathan Sayward, a local merchant who had prospered in the West Indies trade. By 1860, his descendants had opened the house to the public to share the story of their Colonial ancestors. Accessible only by guided tour (first and third Saturday, June through mid-October, 11–4 with the last tour at 3), the house reveals the decor of a prosperous New England family and the stories of the free and enslaved people who lived here at the outset of the Revolutionary War. The parlor—considered one of the country's best-preserved Colonial interiors, with a tall clock and mahogany Chippendale-style chairs—looks pretty much as it did when Sayward lived here.