5 Best Sights in Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire

Dartmouth's excellent art museum owns Picasso's Guitar on a Table, silver by Paul Revere, a set of Assyrian reliefs from the 9th century BC, along with other noteworthy examples of African, Peruvian, Oceanic, Asian, European, and American art. The range of contemporary works—including pieces by John Sloan, William Glackens, Mark Rothko, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró—is particularly notable. Rivaling the collection is the museum's architecture: a series of austere, copper-roof, redbrick buildings arranged around a courtyard. The museum galleries received an ambitious renovation and expansion in 2019 that added five new galleries and a striking new entrance designed by the husband-and-wife architectural team of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (known for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and New York's downtown Whitney Museum).

The former home of the statesman who served as private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Secretary of State to Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, built the 22-room Fells on Lake Sunapee as a summer home in 1890. House tours offer a glimpse of late Victorian life on a New Hampshire estate. The grounds, a gardener's delight, include a 100-foot-long perennial garden and a rock garden with a brook flowing through it. Miles of hiking trails can also be accessed from its 83½ acres.

There are two main ways to access this dramatic 2,937-foot granite peak east of Lake Sunapee. Approach it through Winslow State Park, which is closer to New London, by driving to the picnic area and hiking a 1.8-mile loop trail to the top. Or, more popularly, drive the 3½-mile scenic auto route through Rollins State Park, which snakes up the mountain's southern slope and leads to a ½-mile summit trail. However you get there, the views from the top are astounding. The park road at Rollins State Park closes at 5 pm nightly and from mid-November to late May, but from Winslow State Park you can hike Mt. Kearsarge any time of day or night, year-round. Rollins State Park is accessed from the cute Colonial village of Warner, which is worth a quick stroll.

On a bluff in rural Cornish with views of Vermont's stately Mt. Ascutney, this pastoral property celebrates the life and artistry of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a leading 19th-century sculptor with renowned works on Boston Common, Manhattan's Central Park, and Chicago's Lincoln Park. In summer you can tour his house (with original furnishings), studio, and galleries, and year-round it's a pleasure to explore the 150 gorgeous acres of lawns, gardens, and woodlands dotted with casts of his works and laced with 2½ miles of hiking trails. Concerts are held Sunday from late June through August.

On the west side of Lake Sunapee, this old-fashioned summer resort community has a large marina, a few restaurants and shops on the water, a tidy village green with a gazebo, and a small museum.