Thomas Jefferson inherited land in Virginia's Albemarle County and selected a mountaintop he called Monticello for his home. Construction began in 1768, and Jefferson moved into the unfinished house around 1770. Drawing on classical and Palladian sources, he treated the project as a continuing architectural experiment rather than a fixed design. Early work produced a compact two-story residence, while gardens, orchards, fields, workshops, roads, and quarters developed across a much larger plantation landscape.

Monticello depended on enslaved labor. More than six hundred people were enslaved by Jefferson over his lifetime, although the population at the plantation varied. Enslaved men, women, and children cultivated crops, cared for livestock, cooked, cleaned, made textiles and nails, built structures, and practiced skilled trades. Mulberry Row became an important center of work and residence. Members of the Hemings family held varied roles, and Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, who negotiated extraordinary promises concerning their children's eventual freedom.

Jefferson used Monticello throughout his public career. He drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia but returned to the plantation as a Virginia legislator and governor. British troops under Banastre Tarleton approached in June 1781, prompting his escape shortly before their arrival. After diplomatic service in France, Jefferson redesigned the house with ideas observed in Europe. Later expansion created the dome, service passages, specialized rooms, and familiar west front while he served as vice president and president.

After retiring from the presidency in 1809, Jefferson lived at Monticello amid family, visitors, books, scientific interests, and mounting debt. He planned the nearby University of Virginia while continuing to manage the plantation. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826. Debt forced the sale of the estate and most of its enslaved residents, separating families. Uriah Phillips Levy acquired Monticello in 1834 and, with later members of the Levy family, carried out repairs that helped the house survive the nineteenth century despite wartime seizure and legal disputes.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased Monticello in 1923 and opened it as a historic site. Restoration initially emphasized Jefferson's architecture and public achievements, but archaeological, documentary, and descendant-based research greatly expanded interpretation of plantation labor and family life. The property was inscribed with the University of Virginia as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Today the Thomas Jefferson Foundation conserves the house, landscape, objects, gardens, burial ground, and archaeological resources while interpreting both revolutionary ideals and the realities of slavery that sustained the estate.