The Cliff Walk runs three miles along Newport's rocky Atlantic edge, open ocean on one side and Gilded Age excess on the other. It stretches from Easton's Beach to Bailey's Beach, growing rougher as it goes. A public right of way since 1975, it passes through the back gardens of the millionaires whose mansions line the clifftops.

Those millionaires were New York's railroad and steel barons, descending on Newport each summer in the 1880s and 1890s not merely to enjoy themselves but to be seen doing so. The result was fierce competition: the Vanderbilts alone contributed the Breakers, Marble House and Rough Point.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Cliff Walk to unpick the social machinery of the Gilded Age, tracing rivalries between the Astors, Vanderbilts and Belmonts, and examining what Mark Twain meant when he coined a phrase that was less flattering than it sounded.