Comparing Downton Abbey: The Exhibition — now open at Biltmore Estate — to the Downton Abbey costume show in Biltmore House in 2015 would be like comparing a sumptuous dinner in the Downton dining room to spending a week shadowing the cook, Mrs. Patmore, while all the meals are prepared. The single dinner is a delicious sampling of what’s on offer, and certainly satisfying. But an extended visit with Mrs. Patmore educates you in how it all comes together and what’s going on behind the scenes as well as out in the world.

Downton Abbey: The Exhibition includes dozens of costumes, yes, but it’s also an enveloping visit within the world of the popular PBS series. The Amherst event space on Biltmore Estate (next to the Deerpark Restaurant) has been transformed into what’s essentially an interactive Downton Abbey museum, including visits to detailed recreations of many of the show’s most memorable interiors: the kitchen, the back stairs, Mr. Carson’s pantry, Lady Mary’s bedroom, the dining room, and more. An annex of the exhibition, set up in the Vanderbilt Legacy space at Antler Hill Village, includes several dozen additional costumes, displayed with an intimacy and clarity that wasn’t possible when the show’s clothing was seen within Biltmore House.

Flip through the photo gallery below for a preview of both exhibition sites (click on each photo to advance to the next), and scroll down for more about what to expect when you visit:

Downton Abbey: The Exhibition is a production of Imagine Exhibitions, an Atlanta-based company (not connected to Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment) that worked with NBC/Universal and the show’s production team to create the display. Biltmore is its fourth home since opening in 2017. Created just after the TV series had wrapped filming, the exhibition debuted in New York City and spent time in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Boston before arriving in Asheville in twenty-five 53-foot trailer trucks. It took a month to put it all together, with some finishing touches still wrapping up the day before the November 8 opening.

Imagine has been creating elaborate, museum-quality traveling exhibitions for more than ten years. “Not everything translates into these kinds of experiences,” Tom Zaller, Imagine’s president and CEO, told me, explaining that most TV shows and movies don’t have sufficient creative depth. “But I knew this [show] did, because you you could make this really nice, immersive experience.”

“Immersive” is the only word for Downton Abbey: The Exhibition. Its scale is grand, with giant photos and full-size set recreations. It’s also elaborate in scope, with displays exploring the historical context of the peerage, American heiresses, racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, anti-homosexual laws, finances, and more topics covered by the show’s plot lines. Many of the solidly constructed displays include drawers that visitors can pull out to see additional information or props from the show.

The exhibition is also immersive in the sense that it treats the characters and world of Downton Abbey as real, each character afforded a grand photo portrait and biographical summary. Incidents such as Anna’s arrest are detailed in somber tones, with artifacts such as the detailed arrest warrant.

Props like the arrest warrant can’t really be appreciated while watching the show, Zaller said, “but they really took the time [to make them authentic]. Every letter was written out. They cared about the detail.” The sets may be recreations, but the jewelry and documents and clothes on display are props from the show, on loan from the production company.

The exhibition is designed to appeal to hardcore fans, casual viewers and anyone interested in the history of early 20th century England, Zaller said. “There’s lots to read about and see,” he said, “a lot of historical detail that you might not get just from watching the show … about segregation or women voting or driving or electricity, the war, the Titanic sinking, whatever. The show took place between 1912 and 1926 and so much happened in those years.”

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As was amply noted during the run of Downton Abbey and the 2015 costume exhibition, the show’s time frame overlaps with the history of Biltmore Estate, which was still occupied and managed by George Vanderbilt (who died in 1914) and his family during that period.

“Watching Downton led me to really think even more about the interactions between the Vanderbilts and the servants,” Leslie Klingner, Biltmore’s Curator of Interpretation, told me. “It just helped me populate the house — especially imagining the servants’ hall and the kitchen, which correspond so closely to ours.”

There are little-told stories from Biltmore that also correspond to narratives from the TV show, Klingner said. For example, “We had a butler and a housekeeper who were married and lived in Biltmore House.” And of course, the patriarchs of both Downton and Biltmore had female heirs who took up the mantle of maintaining the estate.

A new guided tour at Biltmore House that launched November 8, titled “Through the Servants’ Eyes,” covers many of these topics and other events from the 1920s. “It’s really hard to think about Biltmore without George Vanderbilt, but the fact remains that this estate was active and flourishing through the teens and the ’20s, and [George’s widow] Edith Vanderbilt and [their daughter] Cornelia chose to live their lives here.”

The “Through the Servants’ Eyes” tour requires an additional fee, while the cost of admission to Downton Abbey: The Exhibition depends on the type of ticket visitors hold. Annual passholders will have to pay an additional fee to enter the Amherst portion of the show, while admission to Amherst is included for those who purchase a one-time admission to the estate. With the estate’s new transportation center and tram system up and running, guests can take a tram to Amherst from other locations on the estate.

Admission to the portion of the show at the Vanderbilt Legacy in Antler Hill Village is included with any entrance to the estate. There guests will find more than 50 costumes from Downton Abbey, including five created for the movie that were not originally part of Downton Abbey: The Exhibition. “The film came out while we were in Boston, and we wanted people to feel there was a tie-in,” Zaller told me. “Those [five outfits] were added for Boston and for here specifically.”

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The five film costumes greet guests as they enter the Vanderbilt Legacy hall, including the elaborate uniform worn by King George, historically accurate medals and all. One room at the Legacy displays the various wedding outfits worn during the run of the show. Fewer than a half-dozen are repeats from Biltmore’s 2015 costume show, Klingner said. “There were so many that we wanted for that exhibition and weren’t able to get [that are now here].”

It’s easier to appreciate the details of the costumes in Legacy’s well-lit space than it might have been in many of the rooms of Biltmore House, Klingner said. “They’re not behind glass, so you get to see them close up. The thing with costumes is, so much work goes into them and you see so little [on television].” And because of the easy admission to Legacy, “you can go back and see the costumes as many times as you like.”

For the elaborate displays at Amherst, fans of Downton Abbey will want to budget a couple of hours or more. Guests could spend 20 minutes or longer just lingering in the video room, a large hall within the exhibition space in which three walls are floor-to-ceiling video screens that transform into different locations from the Downton Abbey series, turning the room into the library, for example, through the magic of CG effects. Scenes from the show, including familiar incidents and dialogue, then fade in and out on the walls.

“We could only build so much,” Zaller said. “And the scripts were so good and there were so many funny moments and heart-wrenching stuff that had to be in the exhibition.”

For humor, of course, fans of the show will think immediately of the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith. Violet gets her own big display in Downton Abbey: The Exhibition, with costumes and accessories and a video display replaying some of her many bon mots.

“If you’re a fan of Downton Abbey,” Zaller said of the exhibition, “it delivers.” That it does.

Downton Abbey: The Exhibition is open on Biltmore Estate through April 7. For tickets, hours, admission information, and other details, visit biltmore.com.