The Mark Twain House Reviews

If you are interested in the most famous American author's home where classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and others were written, as well as classic American architecture, you should check out the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT. It offers a nicely presented guided walking tour of the house as well as a museum filled with interesting objects from Twain's life. A hidden gem!

The tour was fun and informative. The inside of the house was beautiful! The museum includes a documentary by Ken Burns.

The house was a treat to visit. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and excited about sharing the history. This was an unexpected jem.

Very nice tour and friendly staff. Very clean and very informative museum.

Wow! I did not expect a building that amazing to be in such a sleepy town. Definitely do the tour of the house. The in character guide is really fun & the beautiful & idiosyncratic house was a delight! Can t recommend enough!

First time visiting, this place is beautiful! You would think a house tour would be boring, but with the details of this home, you can't help but feel like a piece of history coming alive. If only we could touch things! I felt like a child and wanted to poke everything! Can't give it 5 stars because there isn't a cafe and after all the walking and the movie (which is a 4 hour documentary condensed into 23 minutes, gain thanks) I wanted more than chips and juice. Definitely a destination spot!

Lovely home and an informative museum. Great place to visit for families. They show a Ken Burns movie about Mark Twain in the museum's theatre for free!

A must see place if you are in Hartford.

This was our second visit to the home, and VERY enjoyable once again. The preservation society is constantly restoring more and more of the home to its splendor. The bedroom with the bee wallpaper opened since our last visit.

There aren't any pictures because they are not allowed in the home.

The museum changes the displays that feature elements of Samuel Clemons' (Mark Twain's) life. I enjoyed the information about cats in his life.

The gift shop has a nice selection of books and mementos.

Ample parking.

The museum is handicap friendly. The home is not. There are a lot of stairs. My sister-in-law needs a cane. She was able to get around without a problem.

Family friendly.

Excellent facilty which preserves Mark Twain's legacy. Enthusiastic staff share their love of Twain with readers young and old.

Great tour, beautifully refurbished and very authentic

My friend and I really enjoyed seeing the house today and were really looking forward to the tour--It is an amazing house in terms of architecture. We did the 1:30 tour with a man in his late 30s early 40s. He was not very talkative and we had to literally ask questions in most of the rooms to get him to give up information about the house and history. Very annoying. Other people in our group thought the same thing. He didn't volunteer very much besides the architecture and very little basic history about Mark Twain. Too bad because we drove almost 3 hours today and were really looking forward to the tour.

There is a display devoted to the servants that had nothing to do with the tour, that was excellent.

Just WOW I drive by this place for six years and I never noticed it. Beautiful place highly recommended for everyone

Really nice place to see with an interesting guide tour which allows you to dive in a hundred and a half years back for quote reasonable price. It has its own spacious parking lot and a store and museum with various selections of Mark Twain related stories and merchandise.

This place is awesome I recommend you see it for your self

The tour wasn't too fast or too slow, and it was informative, but not boring. However, while my tour guide was good in most other aspects, she was a little rude.

Very interesting history lesson. Offers military discount

Great place to visit. Have unique house tours by docients portraying different people in Mark Twain's life, such as his wife Livy. The docients are dressed up as these characters giving the tours through the characters interpretation. These tours are called "Living History Tours". Very unique!

What a beautiful home, stepping back in time was so cool. Our tour guide, Sophie, was amazing and so informative. Would recommend it to anyone.

A guided tour of his beautiful house. Truly worth a trip

Great museum! Feels like the spirit of the great Mark Twain is still around.

Visited the house in July. The house is beautiful and following Clemens's steps throughout the rooms is a great experience.
The tour (1h) is very interesting. Our guide Bailey was amazing. She was very clear and attentive. We learned a lot of information.
I HIGHLY recommend it!

I learned more about my childhood favorite writer Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) by visiting his house. The tour guide is very entertaining and takes to every corner of the house with the stories related to each member of the family. Very luxurious house for 1880 year with the phone in every room, although Twain thought and told Mr Bell, that phone was an absurd idea and will disappear very soon.

Very interesting and educational. Tours were informative and worth taking. The house is well restored and depicts the 1800s well having quarters for 11 servants

Interesting history, energetic tour guide, friendly staff. Well worth the visit!

Great place to get yourself acquainted with true American history. A must visit place in Hartford.

Wonderful venue, excellent staff just an amazing place to visit

Our guides enthusiasm for Sam Clemmens combined with a well restored house made for a fantastic experience. Thank you Ross for a memoral visit. I got the book you recommended too.

Fascinating. Beautifully restored. Excellent guides.

Awesome. Had the tour guides by an actress playing Mrs. Twain. Fun, informative, fantastic

Well worth a visit, the interior is quite spectacular

Friendly staff and great good. The restaurant is clean and has a good atmosphere

This tour is a lot of fun, it's informative, and there's lots to see. The house is beautiful, and the guides are very good at staying in character without it being silly or dull. Specifically, our guide was George Griffin (I think the actor's name is Tom), and he was funny, entertaining, and provided not only a wealth of information on the property, but also the time period in general. If I could give more than five stars I would.

Gorgeous, host was very knowledgeable, etc. My only whine is that you cannot photograph in the house. But it was beautiful! And you can feel that the Clemens family was a happy one. Good vibes prevail.

Didn't go in but was impressed just looking at it from the outside.

Despicable customer service yet restroom was efficient yet needed re-evaluation and upgrade

Omg, here is yet another great place to haunt. TONS of historical info about the very man who give us Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Samuel Clemmins (Mark Twain), and his rise to who he was and how he got there.

I enjoyed my time at this Museum as well as the one next to it.

What a great place to visit! We had a great time getting an after hours tour and walking around the grounds. A cool place for anyone that likes history and books...haha! You will enjoy the tour.

The information we received was very good. Our tour guide was very informative and answered any question we asked. We would take this tour again.

Great place to learn something about Mark Twain and his interesting live. And maybe you will learn something about yourself.

Amazing place and party venue. I had the most memorable time

Tour was great. The house is interesting. They did a great job. Very friendly

Fascinating experience, each guide seems to have a unique way of conducting the tour. Made me want to go back and re-read his books.

super interesting and learned a lot - recommend for sure

It was great with all the history stuff but the house and especially the carpet was too dirty and bothered my throat the entire time I was there. I understand that the house needs to be 'preserved' but not to a point that it gives out a musty smell especially when there is money charged for it.

If your going to visit the Mark Twain house I encourage you to get the living history tour. Yeah you can get a tour with one of the staff there for 20 dollars or you can get a living history tour for 25 dollars. This tour consists of a person playing in character our tour guide was George Griffin. He was Mark Twain's butler. What a fantastic job he did playing the character right down to his costume. Very informative and funny. Tour lasted about 75 minutes or so. They also have a small cafeteria,and they have wraps, sandwiches, salads. They also have water, soda, coffee, beer and wine. Great time my wife and I had. A gem in the city of Hartford.

Original house Twain lived in with his family, guided by very knowledgeable and funny staff. Lots of facts about the house, his life, and his family.

Staff were very helpful and friendly. Great customer service!!!!!

Did the Get a Clue mystery tour - what fun! Playing Clue with real people in a house museum with characters acting is an absolute winning idea. I'd do this again and again. Great for a group trip too!

Great tour. Be sure to take the tour with George the butler.

It was great. My husband and I love this place. Great place to visit. We will visit again.

There were a couple of reasons not to give this 5 stars but I will say first the house is amazing and definitely worth a visit. The restored stenciling on the walls is incredibly beautiful and the library is my dream room! That being said I had two issues that clouded my overall view.

First the bathrooms are not well maintained. It does not matter how shiny and nice the visitor center looks if none of the soap dispensers work or one of the faucets is missing in the bathroom. I know budgets are tight, I am the director of a historic home myself, but those are inexpensive fixes that would make a large difference in visitor perception.

Second the labels in the gallery are printed in a font size that is so small that it is almost unreadable, especially if you are standing 18-24 inches away from the displays, as most museums require. My 70 year old mother was so frustrated she stopped trying to read them and likely missed out on important info. This is also an easy fix and something the curator should have noticed before the exhibit opened.

Its a good place but honestly speaking nothing worth to be called a museum. Just Mark Twain old house and few books....

The Mark Twain house is a perfect little stop if you re walking around downtown Hartford and looking for some unique history and back story into some of your favorite childhood books.

We booked a tour, which is preceded with a brief video. We came to learn that Mark Twain (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens) leaned heavily on his memories growing up, putting his life into his books. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a small frontier village on the banks of the Mississippi River, and after some extensive traveling and writing, he built this large house here in CT.

The house itself is three stories and the museum sits on the first floor. The whole tour plus a quick walk around the grounds took us a little under two hours. Highly recommended!

Special experience with tour; Living History-A very happy family with Susy Clemens!

The house is really beautiful. It can only be accessed through their guided tour, but it is worth the price. The tour starts with the living space of the Clemens and ended with the servant quarter. We learn about the history of the building as a whole, as well as history related to each room we visited. Due to covid-19, they have limited the number of people per tour, and social distancing was enforced in each area with circle markings for each party.

So cool to see history being preserved for future generations.

Fun experience and educational. Enjoyed the folks leading the tours.

great place to get some cool insights into our history.

An awesome day learning far more than the grade school history books ever taught. A truly American author.

Amazing place for lovers of literature and history. It is a very good thing that they provided tours.

A great experience for the history buff. Well run and informative. A must for lovers of his life and works.

It was a little bit pricey but you get a full house tour and the price we paid was to have the tour guide with us that acts like he is in the twain era idk what year lol but overall it was pretty cool and a very nice house. I believe its 25 for a general tour and 50 for the tour guide.