Boerum Hill

It measures only seven blocks long (from Court Street to Fourth Avenue) and six blocks across (from Schermerhorn Street to Wyckoff Street) but this little micro-neighborhood is filled with some of the most beautiful brownstones in the city and contains one of Brooklyn's most famous hubs of ethnic life.

The stretch of Atlantic Avenue that runs through Boerum Hill is the heart of Brooklyn's yearly Atlantic Antic, a carnival-like street fair, filled with funnel cakes, Italian sausages, tabouli salad and rock 'n roll. It's the same stretch that's an antique-hunter's dream come true during the rest of the year -- where you can find carpets and old crockery galore -- and has one of Brooklyn's best concentrations of Middle Eastern and Caribbean cuisine. (It's also home to the Brooklyn House of Detention.)

Within the last few years, development came to the neighborhood in full force; first with a series of new townhouses along State Street (which sold extremely well) and, more recently, with several new condo buildings like 75 Smith. Condos range from around $400,000 and $1 million.

But the real star of the neighborhood, real estate-wise, are the brownstones, most of which went up between 1840 and 1870. In the 1960s and '70s, most of these brownstones could be had for around $20,000. Today, they can go anywhere from $1.5 million to $3.5 million.

For some, the nabe might be most famous for the record-breaking purchase of a $3.6 million home in early 2006 by the now-deceased actor Heath Ledger and his then-girlfriend Michelle Williams.