Well, did you ever? What a swell place for a jazz festival

Newport's celebrity guest list includes JFK, Bob Dylan and Louis Armstrong. Richard Gilbert joins the party

Memories of two classic films with outstanding music drew me to Newport, Rhode Island. High Society, with Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and Cole Porter's score, is set in Newport during the preparations for a society wedding. Jazz on a Summer's Day, the best jazz film ever, is a documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

I also had distant memories of the Kennedy links with Newport. Jackie married John F Kennedy here and her childhood home was used as the summer White House. Its unlikely name, Hammersmith Farm, is a reminder of Rhode Island's colonial past and in Newport I saw signposts to Bristol, Portsmouth and Tiverton.

Rhode Island, nicknamed Little Rhody, is America's smallest state but locals proudly remind you that its full legal name is by far the longest in the Union - the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Once a key East Coast port and naval base, Newport has a rich history that ranges from welcoming persecuted dissenters in the 17th century to attracting America's wealthiest tycoons who built the country's most opulent mansions here 200 years later.

The resort's roll-call of firsts is an eccentric mix. It is the home of America's oldest tavern, synagogue, lending library and tennis tournament as well as the venue of the first open-air jazz festival. For sailors it is the yachting capital of the US and for tennis fans it has the largest tennis hall of fame in the world.

For music fans, this is where Bob Dylan changed the direction of rock music. Dylan's breakthrough to fame came with his appearance at the 1963 Newport Folk Music Festival. Two years later at the same festival he played an electric guitar with a rock band for the first time and the folkies in the audience booed him. Dylan swore he would never return to Newport, but after 37 years he was finally wooed back to top the folk festival bill. Wearing a wig, a false beard and a white Stetson, Dylan switched between acoustic and electric guitar. This time, the Newport audience cheered him.

Newport's reputation as the playground of the rich goes back to the 18th century when wealthy southerners escaped stifling summers to enjoy Rhode Island's cool Atlantic breezes. After the Civil War it was New York's industrial magnates who turned Newport into the most fashionable and ostentatious resort in the country. The steamboat journey from New York to Newport conveniently took only one day

The tycoons competed to build the most palatial and expensive mansions, which they called "summer cottages". The Newport Preservation Society now owns 11 and you can tour these carefully restored monuments to "conspicuous consumption". That was the phrase coined by the economist Thorstein Veblen specifically to describe Newport's astonishing display of extravagance at the turn of the century.

I walked along luxurious Bellevue Avenue, which has a strong aroma of serious money and is lined with mansions that were built in Newport's Gilded Age, as Mark Twain dubbed the period.

Kingscote, the oldest "cottage", was my first stop. It has a modest gothic revival exterior but inside is Newport eclectic. The rooms are filled with Chinese porcelain, Venetian paintings, Delftware, William Morris wallpaper, Siena marble, a cork-tiled ceiling and a dining-room wall made of Tiffany glass tiles.

But compared with The Elms, Kingscote is a bungalow. Edward Berwind, a coal millionaire, wanted his mansion to be a faithful copy of an 18th-century French chateau. This is what he got, complete with a Louis XV-style ballroom, a marble staircase, Venetian paintings, Chippendale furniture and a 10-acre garden. Berwind even constructed his own elaborate underground railway for The Elms, discreetly bringing in coal to heat the property.

Even more sumptuous is The Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt II's 70-room mansion overlooking the Atlantic. Complete rooms were designed and built in Europe and transported to Newport along with sculptures and art treasures. The shipping and railroad tycoon modelled his summer retreat on an Italian Renaissance palace, filling it with rare French and Italian marble, mosaics, painted ceilings, Flemish tapestries, Baccarat chandeliers and gilded panelling. In a nice touch of oneupmanship the bathroom taps offered a choice of hot and cold fresh rainwater or saltwater pumped up from the ocean.

Vanderbilt had three times more cash than the US government and used to lend money to the treasury when it was hard up. His brother William chose a pastiche of the Petit Trianon at Versailles for his own mansion. Determined to dazzle the opposition, he told his architect to design "the best living accommodation that money could buy". The result was an $11m "cottage" in 1892 called Marble House. Despite the luxury, most of these mansions were occupied for only six weeks a year.

For $30 (£18), the Gilded Age Experience ticket admits you to a tour of five mansions. An alternative way to see the exteriors and gardens is to take the Cliff Walk and not pay a cent. This is Newport's three-mile coastline trail: stroll along stone paths and walkways with the Atlantic on one side and the mansions on the other.

It was time to enjoy some jazz on a summer's day at the granddaddy of all jazz festivals. The Newport Jazz Festival dates back to 1954, when George Wein was asked to organise an open-air festival that would complement the Tanglewood classical music festival in Massachusetts. Over the years Wein has brought to Newport every jazz great, from Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to Charles Mingus, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald. There cannot be a more spectacular site for an open-air jazz festival than Fort Adams State Park overlooking Narragansett Bay and Newport Harbor. The imposing fort was built in the 19th century to guard the East Coast and was used by the military until 1950. Most of the 10,000 people in the audience sat happily on the grass surrounded by ice buckets filled with soft drinks. Because the fort is government property Newport is that rare thing, a dry music festival. I gazed enviously at the dozens of yachts bobbing in the harbour, where jazz fans could hear the music clearly and were cracking open bottles and diving into the sea to cool off.

There are only a few hotels in Newport but you can choose from about 200 inns. Many of them are in Victorian houses where you are likely to get a four-poster bed, a Jacuzzi and a gourmet breakfast. I stayed at the six-room Baldwin Place Inn, a few minutes from the waterfront. My grandly named Vanderbilt Suite was decorated à la Louis XV and there was a hot tub in the garden for guests to get a contemporary taste of Newport's Gilded Age.

The Facts

Getting there

Newport is 90 minutes from Boston by car. There are five buses a day from Boston South Station to Newport for $30 (£18) return. Buses run from New York's Port Authority Terminal to Newport for $58 (£35) return. Richard Gilbert flew to Boston with American Airlines (0845-7789 789).

Being there

Rooms at Baldwin Place Inn, 41 Pelham Street, Newport (001 401 847 3801; www.baldwinplaceinn.com), start at $165 (£99) from May to October but cost less off-peak.

Further information

Discover New England (0870-264 0555; www.discover newengland.org; www.GoNewport.com