Wild parakeets meet pirouettes in sub-tropical, sophisticated Sarasota

SARASOTA flaunts its artistic credentials like no other settlement along Florida’s Gulf Coast. It’s far enough south (just over an hour from Tampa down Interstate 75) for you to have entered a more sub-tropical zone. Bayfront Park has an abundance of monk parakeets flashing greenish blue among the weeping figs. Siesta Key is arguably America’s finest stretch of sand, perfect for bronzing your beach-ready body. The downtown bars have a beyond chilled vibe and St Armand’s Circle across the causeway satisfies most upmarket retail urges.

It took philanthropist Howard Tibbals 60 years to complete his ¾-inch-to-the-foot scale replica of the circus circa 1920

Yet this is also dubbed ‘The Cultural Coast’. Home to the world-famous Ringling Museum of Art and acclaimed Sarasota Ballet. The city’s Rosemary District hosts a plethora of resident performing troupes and there’s street art everywhere. Heritage, too. The 100-year-old Sarasota Opera House was located just behind our base, the Art Ovation Hotel.

Here each chic room comes with crayons and sketchpads as well as a ukulele! If you enjoyed your perfunctory strum you can purchase said instrument. Not for me, but I was tempted to sign up for a ceramic sea turtle painting course down in the installation-filled foyer. Fear not, if this all sounds a mite precious. It’s fun. The musical acts serenading happy hour are definitely not arthouse and there’s no culinary pretension about the terrific Israeli-style small plates from the hotel’s Tzeva restaurant.

All of this, though, was a mere cultural canapé before the heady feast that lay just five miles to the north on a luxuriant 26 acre site overlooking the Gulf. John Ringling may not actually have run away to join the circus, but the $200 million fortune he made from creating the Greatest Show on Earth in the Roaring Twenties has created a unique legacy far from his Iowa roots. His wife Mable was also from the Mid-West – Ohio. When they married in 1905 she was 30, he was 39. Soon they started spending their winters in the Sunshine State. Then they began buying property and then began constructing, and then began collecting.

Rubens rules in the Ringling empire

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is the most monumental of their achievements, the adjacent Circus Museum the jolliest. On site too is the historic Asolo Theater and Bayfront Gardens with their specialist rose garden, all 27,000-sq ft of it, and the bougainvillea-scented Mable’s Secret Garden (where the pair are buried). Seek out also the spectacular banyan groves and you might catch a glimpse of an ornamental  cherub that has been engulfed by the spreading trees.

There is a wide range of tickets covering one or all of these attractions plus the Ringlings’ bayside home, the Ca’ d’Zan. Viewing the Museum collection alone could occupy an entire day, especially if you stray beyond the original 21 galleries devoted to art from the Middle Ages up to the 19th century, the star turn undoubtedly the vast Triumph of the Eucharist canvasses by Rubens. The bulk of the paintings were bought, mostly via European trips, in a remarkable four year period between 1926 and 1930. 

The collection has swollen since under the stewardship of Florida State. Digitally you can access information on over 40,000 of its artworks. In the Museum itself, beyond the courtyard bridge featuring the bronze replica of Michelangelo’s David, check out the fascinating Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for Asian Art, presenting over 3,000 years of history and culture including Chinese ceramics and South and Central Asian sculpture.

After which it’s time to ‘roll up, roll up’. Admission to the Circus Museum is included with the Art Museum ticket. As you enter you haven’t left painting completely behind. There’s a giant mural homage to the Big Top. The final version of Ringling Brothers Circus – in tandem with Barnum & Bailey® for a century – called it a day in 2017, so the exhibits here really represent history now. John and Mable’s magnificent turn-of-the-century private railcar, the Wisconsin, trumpets the scale of their travelling circus. 

A different kind of scale dominates the Tibbals Learning Center. It took philanthropist Howard Tibbals 60 years to complete his ¾-inch-to-the-foot scale replica of the circus circe 1920 – 42,000 pieces, spanning 3,800 square feet. He donated it to the estate. Copyright issues mean it is called The Howard Bros Circus Model. The museum’s poster galleries are a reminder, too, of un-PC days when freak shows were not frowned upon. Meet the Bearded Lady and much worse.

Ca’ d’Zan – feeling haunted by an eerie portrait

All this makes for a tremendous day out, but the highlight for me was Ca’ d’Zan. The name means ‘House of John’ in Venetian dialect and the Ringlings’ home is their interpretation of a Grand Canal palazzo with extra Gothic flourishes and all mod cons (such Florida’s first working elevator). In 1926 at a cost of a then eye-watering $1.5 million, it was finally ready to live in  – in grand style – but Mable had only three winters there before she died prematurely of complications from Addison’s Disease. 

Her presence is everywhere in this mansion of 41 rooms and 15 bathrooms. Obviously in the master en suite bedroom she designed for herself, but even the low-ceilinged ‘Game Room’ that was her husband’s domain on the fourth of d’Zan’s five storeys. This floor housed the steel vault where he stored the family valuables. During his winter stays he retreated to this den after dinner to play poker and billiards with his pals and broach his vast booze collection. The wall decorations celebrate Venice at Carnival time.

Maybe a mite kitsch, I thought, and then eye my was caught by a ceiling fresco extending the theme. As spooky as it was unexpected. The Hungarian artist, also commissioned to paint the ballroom below, had portrayed John as a street musician, Mable as a fairytale figure in a flowing gown, a parrot perched on her arm, whirling dogs all around. Perhaps it was meant as a playful riposte to the American mega-rich of the day, who shunned these Ringling arrivistes for making their fortune out of lion tamers and trapeze artists.

From here the ascent is via an outside stair to the summit of Ca’ d’Zan’s 80ft Italian Renaissance tower. The stunning view across the 16th century tiled roof is to the barrier islands, which the entrepreneurial John was already developing. The looming Great Depression, though, would cost him dear. Ironically he himself had stocked his house via auctions with furniture and fittings from great Gilded Age families who had fallen on straitened times. Ca’ d’Zan itself was in a bad state until a sympathetic $15 million restoration in the 1990s.

The standard tour gives you access to a treasure house of John and Mable's personal belongings, such as an Aeolian organ and a crystal chandelier that once hung in New York’s Waldorf Astoria. All protected by coloured glass panels to keep out the Florida sun. For the full, strangely moving experience book a small group ‘Ca’ d’Zan Experience Tour’, to visit the inner sanctums, as we did. It’s a premium price, mind – $60 per person for a 70 minute tour (Museum Admission not included).

How ‘Billy Elliot’ forged a new ballet life out west

Performing arts have their place on the Ringling Estate. Beyond the Welcome Centre you’ll find the Asolo Theatre, where we took in a matinee of a musical version of the classic Hollywood courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men. The stage and rehearsal rooms here are the permanent home for the Sarasota Ballet, one of America’s leading companies. Alas, we never got to see them perform. either here or at their other venue, the aforementioned Opera House. They were on the cusp of decamping to London, where they were bringing a programme to the Royal Ballet, devoted to its founder choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton. A great honour.

The link here is Sarasota Ballet’s director Iain Webb, now 65, who, as a novice dancer at Covent Garden was mentored by Sir Frederick. Over the past 16 seasons Iain and his wife, former Royal Ballet principal Margaret Barbieri have transformed the fortunes of their Florida troupe. Along the way, Iain played a major role in promoting Matthew Bourne’s legendary all-male Swan Lake all the way to Broadway. Not bad for a 14-year-old from a working class Scarborough family, who got the urge to become a ballet dancer and realised his dream against the odds. When we met he was happy to acknowledge the uncanny Billy Elliot echoes. Read this BBC interview to learn the full back story.

What else has Sarasota to offer?

As you’d expect, the dining scene is vibrant. Our stand-out meal was at sophisticated Selva Grill on Main Street. It’s the perennial haunt of Iain Webb, who admits to sticking to either their Seafood Paella Risotto or their traditional NY strip steak with herb butter and truffle parmesan fries, finished with port demi-glace. After a seafood-centric road trip I couldn’t resist the latter and it was a treat.

Another constant along the Gulf Coast had been some amazing craft beer and our final hoppy port of call on 2nd Street was 99 Bottles Taproom and Bottle Shop, also home to a terrific wine list, After which some end of the road fresh air was in order.

Step up the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens – 15 acres of bayfront land dedicated to the display and study of epiphytic orchids, bromeliads, gesneriads and other tropical plants plus an awesome array of banyan and mangrove. A further 30 acres out at Spanish Point complete yet another remarkable bequest to Sarasota. Life’s not just a beach along this charmed coastline.

Check out Neil’s earlier Florida adventures in St Petersburg and Tampa.