Vizcaya Museum & Gardens

A Gilded Age fantasy of a Venetian villa on the shore of Biscayne Bay, built between 1914 and 1922 as the winter estate of industrialist James Deering. Seventy rooms furnished with European antiques from the 15th to 19th centuries open onto ten acres of formal Italian gardens, grottoes, fountains and a carved stone barge breakwater in the bay.

Highlights: the main house tour with its courtyard (now glass-roofed), the tea house at the water's edge, the secret garden and the mangrove-lined shoreline. Photography is the unofficial main activity here; the light in the gardens is best before 11am.

Practical: closed Tuesdays. Tickets are timed; buy online. Allow two to three hours. Free parking on site. The Metrorail Vizcaya station is a ten-minute walk.