Asheville author Denise Kiernan tells the story of the Biltmore House in “The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home,”  on “North Carolina Bookwatch,” Sunday at 11 a.m., and Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

With a reported area of 175,000 square feet, the Biltmore House is by far the largest privately owned house in the United States. It is also one of the country’s most visited attractions.

The mansion, with 250 rooms, is packed full of art, antiques, architecture, books, collections of vintage clothing and other accessories representative of the Gilded Age. On a typical day, thousands of visitors pay up to $75 for a one-time visit to the mansion, its gardens and winery. If it sounds expensive, it is a bargain compared to a trip to France to see something comparable.

Kiernan tells how and why the Biltmore House was built and how its gradual transformation to a high-class tourist attraction made possible its survival.

In 1888, George Washington Vanderbilt, a young wealthy bachelor, and his mother came to Asheville to take advantage of the healthy mountain air. On horseback rides around the surrounding mountains and forest, George was enthralled. Through agents, he began the secret and systematic purchase of thousands and then tens of thousands of forest and farmlands. Ultimately, more than 100,000 of these acres became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forrest.

George also decided to build a home. The idea began modestly, but after a trip to the Loire Valley in France with the famed architect Richard Morris Hunt, plans expanded. The designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, was brought on to design the landscape and Gifford Pinchot agreed to plan for the massive forests.

The house opened in 1895. Kiernan told me recently that it might have been simply a 275-room “man-cave” for the then aging George. In 1898 he married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser and in 1900 their daughter, Cornelia, was born at Biltmore.

Later, her sons, William and George, and their families took charge of the aging castle.