Meadow Brook Hall

If you make one non-food stop in Rochester Hills, make it this one. Meadow Brook Hall is a 110-room, 88,000-square-foot Tudor-revival mansion built between 1926 and 1929 by Matilda Dodge Wilson — widow of auto pioneer John Dodge, and at the time one of the wealthiest women in the world — and her second husband, lumber baron Alfred Wilson. It’s a National Historic Landmark and the fourth-largest historic house museum in the country, and the craftsmanship is the whole point: hand-carved woodwork, Tiffany glass, sculpted ceilings, 39 chimneys, a secret staircase. Docent-led tours run year-round (the estate takes January off), and the grounds — the 1,400-plus acres the Wilsons eventually gave to found Oakland University — are worth the walk on their own. It’s the kind of place that floors out-of-towners and quietly reminds locals what’s sitting in their backyard. Firmly on our list.