Palm Beach Mansions & Morikami's Japanese Gardens

Whitehall was Henry Flagler's wedding gift to his third wife Mary Lily Kenan in 1902 — a 55-room Beaux-Arts palace built in 18 months at a cost of $2.5 million. Flagler was John D. Rockefeller's partner at Standard Oil and the visionary who extended his Florida East Coast Railway all the way to Key West, single-handedly opening South Florida to tourism and settlement. The mansion served as their winter retreat until Flagler's death in 1913. Its 75 rooms include the original Louis XV ballroom, a grand foyer modeled after Versailles, and Flagler's private railcar Rambler — a gleaming mahogany-paneled Pullman car that transported the industrialist through his Florida empire. The museum's collection of original furnishings, photographs, and personal artifacts gives an unusually intimate portrait of the Gilded Age's most consequential Florida booster.

A free public beach park on the Atlantic side of Palm Beach island — rare in a town where most oceanfront is private. Phipps has a palm-shaded picnic area, outdoor showers, and a wide stretch of white sand backed by Australian pines. Bring a lunch from a Worth Avenue deli or grab takeout from nearby Pizza Al Fresco to eat at the picnic tables under the pines.

Founded in 1941 by Chicago steel magnate Ralph Norton, the Norton Museum's permanent collection of 8,000+ works is one of the finest in the Southeast. French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism — Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso — anchors the European galleries; American modernism runs from the Hudson River School through Abstract Expressionism. The Chinese art collection spans 5,000 years of jade, bronze, and ceramic works. A 2019 Norman Foster expansion added a glass-roofed sculpture garden that alone justifies the drive from Miami. Allow two hours minimum.

Addison Mizner designed Worth Avenue's four blocks of Mediterranean Revival retail in the early 1920s — whitewashed stucco, red barrel tile, wrought-iron balconies, and hidden vias (courtyards) connecting the main boulevard to secret alley shops. Walk Via Mizner to find bougainvillea-draped archways and the tiny shops Mizner originally built for artisans. The street terminates at the Lake Worth Lagoon with Intracoastal views.

The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens exists because of one of Florida history's strangest and most poignant episodes. In 1904, a group of young Japanese entrepreneurs established Yamato Colony along what is now Yamato Road in Boca Raton — named for the ancient name of Japan — with plans to grow pineapples and silk for American markets. The venture eventually collapsed under a combination of crop disease, freezes, and the economic pressures of World War I. Most colonists returned to Japan, but one man, George Sukeji Morikami, stayed — farming, accumulating modest land holdings, and living quietly in Palm Beach County for decades. In 1973, at age 80, Morikami donated his land to the county with a request that it honor his lost colony. The result is one of the most unexpected cultural institutions in Florida: a museum of Japanese art, history, and culture surrounded by six distinct Japanese garden styles — strolling garden, rock garden, koi pond garden, paradise garden, and others — spread across 200 acres. The Seishin-an teahouse offers a weekly tea ceremony. The gardens are particularly beautiful in early morning light.

Delray Beach's most consistently excellent restaurant for two decades, 32 East anchors the Atlantic Avenue dining scene with a New American menu that changes daily based on local and seasonal ingredients. The wine list is adventurous, the service knowledgeable without being precious, and the dining room warm and lively at lunch. One of the best restaurants between Miami and Palm Beach.

Old School Square Cultural Arts Center occupies Delray Beach's original 1913 schoolhouse and 1926 gymnasium, both beautifully restored and converted into galleries, performance venues, and outdoor concert space. The Cornell Art Museum inside hosts rotating contemporary exhibitions. Atlantic Avenue itself — Delray's main street — runs two miles from Swinton Avenue to the beach, lined with independent galleries, boutiques, and outdoor cafés that give it a genuine small-city character that most Gold Coast towns lack. The Pineapple Grove Arts District, one block north, has additional galleries in converted storefronts.