3 Best Sights in Wimborne Minster, The South

Originally built in the 17th century by the Royalist family that fled from Corfe Castle, this grand country house was remodeled in the 19th century by Sir Charles Barry, co-architect of London's Houses of Parliament, in the style of a lavish 18th-century Venetian palazzo. It contains notable paintings by Titian, Rubens, van Dyck, Tintoretto, and Velásquez as well as a dazzling Spanish Room lined in gilded leather and topped by an ornate gilded ceiling from an early 17th-century Venetian palace. The library has some 1,450 volumes dating from before 1801. There are also fine displays of Egyptian artifacts, the largest private collection in the country, many placed in landscaped gardens originally laid out in the 18th century (later supplemented by a Japanese garden with a teahouse). The extensive (8,500 acres) parklands have walking paths. Admission is by timed guided-tour ticket only.

With an emphasis on local archaeological finds (largely Roman and Iron Age), costumes, and history, this museum in an Elizabethan town house charts the development of the East Dorset area. You can see how residents might have lived in the house through rooms furnished in the styles of several periods, including a 17th-century hall, reconstructions of local businesses that occupied the building, and a working Victorian kitchen. A tearoom overlooks a walled garden that has heritage fruit trees and displays of agricultural and horticultural tools.

Although there has been a church here since the 8th century, the current building, with its crenellated and pinnacled twin towers, was built between 1120 and 1180. The nave reflects these Norman origins in its zigzag molding interspersed with carved heads. Several Gothic components were added later, as were fine Victorian geometric floor tiles and stained glass windows. Don't miss the late-17th-century chained library (where books are chained to shelves), one of the first public libraries in Britain and the country's second-largest chained library. Its collection includes a 14th-century manuscript and a 1522 book with a title page designed by Hans Holbein. Also look out for the pre-Copernican astronomical clock (it has a blue ball earth with the sun going around it), which dates to before the 15th century. It's on the inside wall of the west tower.