Why Hamilton fans should visit Monticello - Thomas Jefferson's former home

On sunny days, a young Thomas Jefferson would ride a horse to the high point of his father's 2023-hectare plantation and savour wraparound views of the British colony of Virginia. One day, he pledged, I will build a house here. Today, the fruit of this dream stands on the levelled hilltop, a testament to the tenacity of the founding father whose home and country took shape simultaneously.

It also embodies the contradictions of America's third president and author of the Declaration of Independence: much as the fledgling nation relied on slave labour, so Jefferson's dream home, Monticello, depended on the labour of the enslaved people he owned. They completed the job 40 years after construction began.

"Jefferson was away a lot of those 40 years - he was governor of Virginia, so he was living in Richmond and Williamsburg, then he went to Europe for five years [as a US representative in France]," says Monticello guide Lisa Dugan. "The other reason it took 40 years is because he changed it dramatically. When he left to go to France, the house was pretty much finished - eight rooms, two storeys. He falls in love with European architecture, comes back and expands that eight-room house to 21 rooms."

The result is a triumph for the dilettante architect, a masterwork of skylights, alcove beds, an elliptical arch and a dome of the type Jefferson had seen in Italy (Monticello means "little hill" in Italian). Rare maps, Native American artefacts, hunting trophies and fossilised bones line the parlour.

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"He decorates the space to entertain and educate [guests]," Dugan says. "Jefferson thought knowledge was power and an educated citizen was the key to a successful democracy." This ideology was the bedrock of the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed America's independence from Britain on July 4, 1776; an original copy is in the library. The first draft - of which Jefferson was sole author - called for the abolition of slavery; this provision was expunged from the final, multi-authored document.

Women didn't fare well either - including Jefferson's wife Martha, who died in childbirth, and his mistress Sally Hemmings who, along with their children, was born into slavery. The workers whose labour is baked into Monticello's foundations hadn't a hope. "There were as many as 130 enslaved workers living on the plantation," Dugan says. "They're making the nails for the house, they make the bricks for the house."

Their workshops are dotted around the sprawling grounds, their quarters tucked beneath the terraces. And their once-buried stories have found voice in the oral history project initiated by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello.

What: World Heritage-listed Monticello in Charlottesville runs a variety of house and garden tours focusing on subjects such as slavery and women. Tickets from $46.