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Situated on the eastern edge of the Pinellas Peninsula,
ST PETERSBURG may be only twenty miles from Tampa,
but location is about the only thing these cities share. Declared
the healthiest place in the US in 1885, it wasted no time in wooing
the recuperating and the retired, at one point putting five thousand
green benches on its streets to take the weight off elderly legs.
Although it remains a mecca for the retired, St Petersburg has
worked hard to attract young blood. In addition to rejuvenating
the pier, which now offers something for every age, its diverse
selection of museums and plethora of art galleries has contributed
to its emergence as one of Florida's richest cultural cities.
Most remarkable of all, the town has acquired a major collection
of works by Salvador Dali making St Petersburg a good option if
you are looking for a break from the beaches nine miles west on
the Gulf Coast.
The Salvador Dali Museum , 1000
S 3rd St (MonSat 9.30am5.30pm, Sun noon5.30pm; $8; tel 727/822-6270;
www.salvadordalimuseum.org ), stores more than a thousand paintings
from the collection of a Cleveland industrialist, A. Reynolds
Morse, who struck up a friendship with the artist in the 1940s.
Free tours begin whenever sufficient people gather,
and trace a chronological path around the works, from the artist's
early experiments with Impressionism and Cubism to the seminal
Surrealist canvas Persistence of Memory .
Once you've done Dali, the quarter-mile-long pier
, jutting from the end of Second Avenue N, is the town's central
focus. It often hosts browsable arts and crafts exhibitions, and
the inverted-pyramid-like building at its head holds five stories
of restaurants, shops and fast-food counters. The pier is also
home to Great Explorations (MonSat 10am8pm, Sun
11am6pm; $4), a hands-on science museum for all ages. At the foot
of the pier, the Museum of History (MonSat 10am5pm,
Sun 15pm; $5) modestly recounts St Petersburg's early twentieth-century
heyday as a winter resort. Nearby, the Museum of Fine
Arts , 255 Beach Drive NE (TuesSat 10am5pm, Sun 15pm;
$6, free on Sun), holds a superlative collection ranging from
pre-Columbian art through Asian and African to European Old Masters.
The Florida International Museum , half a mile
east of the pier at 100 2nd St (daily during exhibition periods
9am6pm; $14.50; reserve at 1-800/777-9882, www.floridamuseum.org
), occupies an entire block and, for about a year at a time, displays
exhibitions from renowned museums all over the world.
