Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
A villa on the bay.
An introduction to the shore of Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove, where Vizcaya’s house and gardens look out over the water.
On this page
Read the city from the shore
Vizcaya stands on Biscayne Bay in the Coconut Grove neighbourhood of Miami, about a quarter of a mile from I-95. Its estate combines formal gardens, native woodland and the outbuildings of a historic village.
A city guide can give context without turning a neighbourhood into a backdrop. Notice how a house is placed to face the water, how gardens are shaped for a subtropical climate and how a city has grown up around an estate.
Stone, gardens and the sea
Vizcaya reinterprets an eighteenth-century Italian villa for a subtropical setting: a Main House of more than seventy rooms, formal gardens around an artificial hill and a carved stone barge in the bay in front of the house.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was made, repaired and maintained. A photograph alone cannot tell you who carved a balustrade or restored a ceiling, or the conditions in which they worked.
A Vizcaya chapter
Vizcaya shows a distinctive side of Miami: a winter home of the 1910s on the bay, bought by the county in 1952 and opened as a museum the following year.
Look at the meeting of the two: European models, and the subtropical landscape and weather of South Florida.
Make room for context
Pair this city reading with the estate’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places, commissions their restoration or represents their makers.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
