About
Longleat in Wiltshire is one of the great Elizabethan houses of England — a pioneering prodigy house of the 1570s that was also the first stately home in Britain to open a drive-through safari park, in 1966, thereby reinventing the British stately home experience and ensuring its own financial survival in the most audacious and improbable way. These two facts capture Longleat's extraordinary character: it is simultaneously a building of supreme architectural importance and one of England's most-visited family attractions, ancient and modern in the same magnificent breath.
The house was designed by Robert Smythson, England's first great architect, for Sir John Thynne between approximately 1568 and 1580. It was one of the first Elizabethan 'prodigy houses' — palatial country houses built primarily for entertainment and display rather than defence — and, crucially, the first such house in England to be built without any defensive considerations whatsoever, entirely on the new Italian Renaissance principle that a gentleman's house should express cultivated refinement rather than military preparedness. The resulting building — three storeys of Jurassic limestone with identical facades on all four sides, a roofline crowded with glazed bays and turrets, and a revolutionary abundance of glass in its mullioned windows — was a direct statement of a new English architectural confidence. The Thynne family, later elevated as Marquesses of Bath, have owned Longleat continuously for over 450 years.
The State Rooms contain an outstanding collection assembled over five centuries: a series of early-17th-century Flemish tapestries of exceptional quality, Old Master paintings including works by Titian, Tintoretto, and Flemish masters, Meissen porcelain, and superb furniture. The libraries — Longleat has seven private libraries containing some 40,000 books — are among the finest in private hands in England. The parkland was landscaped by Capability Brown in the 1750s, transforming the formal garden into the naturalistic lakes and woodland that frame the house today. The famous hedge maze, one of the world's most complex, was created in 1975.
The safari park, opened in 1966 when the 6th Marquess decided that the combination of unsustainable running costs and the post-war collapse of traditional aristocratic economies required radical intervention, changed English heritage tourism forever. Lions, tigers, cheetahs, giraffes, rhinos, and many other species roam the 900-acre park around the house. The commercial success of this venture has funded the ongoing conservation of the house and its collections, allowing both to survive and flourish. Longleat is today one of England's ten most-visited paid attractions — an outcome that would have been wholly unimaginable to Robert Smythson in 1570.
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Annual Visitors (2019)
600,000
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Busiest: Saturday, Sunday
💡 Weekdays in late April, May, June or September for the best balance of good weather, open attractions, and manageable crowds. Summer school holidays (July-August) see very large queues for the safari drive-through — avoid if possible or arrive at opening time.
💡 Visitor Tips
- BOOK IN ADVANCE — especially for summer and weekends. Longleat is one of England's most visited attractions and turns away visitors without booking on busy days. Book both entry and the house tour simultaneously.
- Arrive at opening time (10:00) on busy days — the safari drive-through queues build rapidly after 11:00 and can involve 30-60 minute waits in peak season.
- Do the house tour before the safari park — guides recommend this as house tours run on fixed times and it's easy to spend longer than expected in the safari.
- The maze is more challenging and time-consuming than it looks — allow 30-45 minutes. The bridges provide orientation points but the puzzle is genuinely complex.
- If your primary interest is the historic house and art collection rather than the safari, consider visiting in March, April, or October when crowds are smaller and the house tour has more space.
- The Monkey Jungle boat ride is a perennial family favourite — arrive early as queues build. The sea lions in the Capability Brown lake are one of the estate's most surreal and delightful sights.
- The safari is best done on a cloudy but dry day — direct summer sun makes photography through car windows difficult and animals tend to seek shade.
- The estate village of Horningsham, adjacent to the park, has one of England's oldest Free Church meeting houses (17th century) — a two-minute detour worth making.
Highlights
Longleat House — England's First Renaissance Prodigy House
Longleat House is one of the supreme achievements of Elizabethan architecture — the first great house in England to be built without any defensive considerations, following the Italian Renaissance principle that a gentleman's house should be designed for beauty and refinement rather than for war. Designed by Robert Smythson, the creator of Hardwick Hall and Wollaton Hall, between about 1568 and 1580, the house introduced to England the concept of four matching facade elevations, each with an identical grid of mullioned windows in a roofline crowded with elaborate bays, turrets, and classical chimneys.
The result is a building of extraordinary formal power and refinement — its warm Jurassic limestone glowing in the Wiltshire light, its proportions simultaneously grand and harmonious.
The State Rooms and Collections
The State Rooms of Longleat contain five centuries of accumulated artistic patronage and family collecting — one of the richest private collections in England. The State Dining Room is hung with a complete set of early 17th-century Flemish tapestries depicting scenes from the life of Ulysses, of exceptional quality and completeness.
The Red Library is one of seven private libraries on the estate, together containing some 40,000 books ranging from medieval manuscripts to 18th-century printed volumes — a collection that rivals many institutional libraries.
The principal rooms are hung with Old Master paintings including works attributed to Titian and Tintoretto; the furniture includes outstanding examples from the William Kent tradition and later periods; and the decorated ceilings of the State Rooms combine Victorian splendour with earlier craftsmanship.
The Safari Park — How Longleat Changed British Heritage
When the 6th Marquess of Bath opened Britain's first drive-through safari park outside Africa in 1966, he transformed not only Longleat but the entire British stately home industry. The idea — that visitors could drive through large paddocks containing free-ranging lions, tigers, elephants, and later giraffes and rhinos — was so unexpected and audacious that it initially attracted derision from the heritage establishment.
Within a year, it had transformed Longleat from a financially struggling private estate into one of England's most-visited attractions.
The safari park remains one of the best in Britain — home to lions, tigers, cheetahs, giraffes, zebras, monkeys (the famous 'Monkey Jungle' experience), wolves, and many other species — and its commercial success has funded the ongoing conservation of one of England's greatest Elizabethan houses.
Capability Brown's Landscape Park
The parkland at Longleat was redesigned in the 1750s by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown — the supreme landscape designer of 18th-century England. Brown's characteristic approach — sweeping away formal gardens, allowing the landscape to flow naturalistically from house to horizon, creating artificial lakes and serpentine water features, planting strategic belts of woodland to frame views — transformed the Longleat grounds into one of the finest examples of the English landscape park tradition.
The result is the setting that visitors see today: a great house apparently floating in a seamless landscape of grass, water, and woodland, the artificiality of the design wholly concealed by its apparent naturalness.
The lakes that Brown created are now occupied by sea lions — one of the safari park's most incongruous and delightful juxtapositions.
Collections
State Rooms Guided Tour
Guided tour of the principal rooms including the State Dining Room (Flemish tapestries), libraries, principal bedrooms, and great hall. Approximately 60-75 minutes.
📍 Longleat House
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.