Monticello (/ˌmɒntɪˈtʃɛloʊ/ MON-tih-CHEL-oh) was the primary plantation of Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States.

Along a prominent lane adjacent to the house, Mulberry Row, the plantation came to include numerous outbuildings for specialized functions, e.g., a nailery; quarters for slaves who worked in the home; gardens for flowers, produce, and Jefferson's experiments in plant breeding—along with tobacco fields and mixed crops.

In 1834, it was bought by Uriah P. Levy, a commodore in the U.S. Navy, for $2,500, (~$81,513 in 2023) who admired Jefferson and spent his own money to preserve the property.

In 1923, Monroe Levy sold it for $500,000 (~$6.96 million in 2023) to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which operates it as a house museum and educational institution.

During his several years in Europe, he had an opportunity to see some of the classical buildings with which he had become acquainted from his reading, as well as to discover the "modern" trends in French architecture that were then fashionable in Paris.

The room inside the dome was described by a visitor as "a noble and beautiful apartment," but it was rarely used—perhaps because it was hot in summer and cold in winter, or because it could be reached only by climbing a steep and very narrow flight of stairs.

The dome room has now been restored to its appearance during Jefferson's lifetime, with "Mars yellow" walls and a painted green and black checkered floor.

Jefferson himself is known to have been interested in Roman and Renaissance texts about ancient temperature-control techniques such as ground-cooled air and heated floors.

[10] Monticello's large central hall and aligned windows were designed to allow a cooling air-current to pass through the house, and the octagonal cupola draws hot air up and out.

The estate was encumbered with debt and Martha Randolph had financial problems in her own family because of her husband's mental illness.

Barclay sold it in 1834 to Uriah P. Levy for $2,500, (~$78,742 in 2024) the first Jewish commodore (equivalent to today's rear admiral) in the United States Navy.

A fifth-generation American whose family first settled in Savannah, Georgia, Levy greatly admired Jefferson and used private funds to repair, restore and preserve the house.

Like his uncle, Jefferson Levy commissioned repairs, restoration and preservation of the grounds and house, which had been deteriorating seriously while the lawsuits wound their way through the courts in New York and Virginia.

From 1989 to 1992, a team of architects from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) created a collection of measured drawings of Monticello.

A large clock face on the external east-facing wall has only an hour hand since Jefferson thought this was accurate enough for those he enslaved.

The entrance hall contains recreations of items collected by Lewis and Clark on the cross-country expedition commissioned by Jefferson to explore the Louisiana Purchase.

[26] In 2017, a room identified as Sally Hemings' quarters at Monticello, adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom, was discovered in an archeological excavation.

This is part of the Mountaintop Project, which includes restorations in order to give a fuller account of the lives of both enslaved and free families at Monticello.

[4] Jefferson located one set of his quarters for enslaved people on Mulberry Row, a one-thousand ft (300 m) road of slave, service, and industrial structures.

[33] Once he began growing wheat, fewer people were needed to maintain the crops, so Jefferson established manual trades.

A cabin on Mulberry Row was, for a time, the home of Sally Hemings, Jefferson's sister-in-law and a slave woman who worked in the household.

Leary concluded that "the chain of evidence securely fastens Sally Hemings's children to their father, Thomas Jefferson.

In addition to growing flowers for display and producing crops for eating, Jefferson used the gardens of Monticello for experimenting with different species.

In the fall of 2001, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation held a commemoration of the burial ground, in which the names of known slaves of Monticello were read aloud.

[47] Completed in August 2015, Dallas Baptist University built one of the largest replicas of Monticello, including its entry halls and a dome room.

[48] Saint Paul's Baptist Church located at the corner of East Belt Boulevard and Hull Street Road in Richmond is modeled after Monticello.

[49] Pi Kappa Alpha's Memorial Headquarters, opened in 1988, is located in the TPC Southwind development in Memphis, Tennessee and was inspired by the architecture of Monticello.

[51][52] The exterior of University of the Cumberlands' Ward and Regina Correll Science Complex is also a replica of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello mansion.

An image of the west front of Monticello by Felix Schlag has been featured on the reverse of the nickel minted since 1938 (with a brief interruption in 2004 and 2005, when designs of the Westward Journey series appeared instead).

The bill was reintroduced in 1976 and retains Jefferson's portrait on the obverse but replaced Monticello on the reverse with an engraved modified reproduction of John Trumbull's 1818 painting Declaration of Independence.