The Cummer Museum and the Olmsted Garden

829 Riverside Avenue on the south bank of the St. Johns. The gardens justify the visit even if you never go inside — three terraces descending to the river: English (formal, clipped), Italian (cypress-lined), and an Olmsted-designed naturalistic garden with live oaks and azaleas arranged to look effortless in the way only careful design achieves.

Inside, 5,000 years of collection — Meissen porcelain, Winslow Homer watercolors, Thomas Hart Benton, Norman Rockwell. Small enough to feel intimate. The Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain on the second floor is one of the finest outside Germany — 18th-century shepherds, musicians, animals in craftsmanship so fine it makes "decorative" sound like a compliment rather than a dismissal. Most people walk past it toward the paintings.