Beauvoir is the antebellum cottage where Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, lived out his final years after the Civil War. The house sits on a wide bluff overlooking the Gulf, with live oaks draped in Spanish moss giving the grounds a melancholy beauty. The property includes the main house, a presidential library, and a museum covering Davis's life and the Confederacy — a contentious subject treated in a way that reflects the site's Southern heritage framing.
Whatever your politics, the house itself is architecturally interesting: a raised Gulf Coast cottage with wide verandas on both levels designed to catch the sea breeze. The grounds are pleasant and the bluff views good. The site sustained severe damage in Hurricane Katrina but was extensively restored and reopened in 2008.