Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
A Gilded Age industrialist built a 16th-century Italian villa on Biscayne Bay in 1916. He used it for two winters. It's still there.
James Deering, heir to the International Harvester fortune, spent $22 million — roughly $600 million in today's dollars — building a Renaissance-style Italian villa on Biscayne Bay between 1914 and 1916. He used it as a winter retreat for two seasons before his health declined. He died in 1925. The estate has been a museum since 1952.
The main house contains 34 decorated rooms spanning Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. Deering had entire rooms shipped from European palaces and reassembled on Biscayne Bay. The garden is modeled on Italian Renaissance estates.
What makes Vizcaya genuinely strange is the scale of the ambition relative to its actual use. Deering built one of the most elaborate private residences in American history to spend two winters in Florida. The formal gardens — ten acres of grottos, fountains, and sculpted hedges — were designed to look centuries old on the day they opened. The stone barge anchored in the bay as a breakwater is a piece of pure theatrical excess that somehow works.
Located at 3251 S Miami Ave, Miami. Open Wednesday through Monday; closed Tuesday. Admission charged. The gardens are worth at least an hour on their own. The bay views from the east terrace are among the best in Miami. Evening events are held regularly — check the calendar.