Places to go in Palm Beaches.

Palm Beach, West Palm, Delray, Boca, Jupiter. 8 places worth the drive in this corner of Florida.

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8 places

Attractions

Norton Museum of Art

West Palm Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

Florida's oldest art museum sits a few blocks off the Intracoastal, where a Foster + Partners redesign wrapped the original 1941 galleries in a low aluminum canopy and kept the old banyan tree growing right out front. Inside you'll find Cezanne and O'Keeffe alongside a deep run of Chinese jades and bronzes, a photography wing, and contemporary work by the likes of Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker. Spend the morning with the European paintings, then drift out to the sculpture garden and the glass-walled Great Hall before lunch in the restaurant off the lobby.

Attractions

Flagler Museum

Palm Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

Henry Flagler built this 75-room white palace as a 1902 wedding gift for his wife Mary Lily, and the Beaux-Arts mansion still anchors the island the railroad baron's money put on the map. Behind the colonnade you walk through a marble-columned Grand Hall, gilded salons, and a music room with a working pipe organ, then out to the pavilion where his private railcar No. 91 sits gleaming. It is the clearest window in Florida into the Gilded Age that built Palm Beach, kept much as the Flaglers left it.

Gardens & wildlife

Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens

Delray Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

George Morikami farmed pineapples here as the last of the Yamato Colony, and willed the land to the county so Florida would remember the Japanese families who settled it. Today his gift is Roji-en, six gardens drawn from a thousand years of Japanese design, where a path winds past koi ponds and bonsai to a museum holding thousands of artifacts. Pause at the tea house, watch the carp surface beneath the pines, and the South Florida heat falls away.

Beaches

John D. MacArthur Beach State Park

North Palm Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

Cross the long boardwalk over the Lake Worth Lagoon and the maritime hammock drops you onto nearly two miles of wild Atlantic sand with no resort wall behind it, just dunes knitted with sea grape and weathered driftwood. The Anastasia coquina rock reef sits close to shore, so the same warm water that washes up whole, unbroken shells turns into shallow snorkeling on a calm low tide. It is a working refuge for nesting sea turtles and wading birds, the kind of beach where you walk a few minutes north and have the surf to yourself.

Beaches

Delray Beach

Delray Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

Two miles of soft, wide sand run straight off the east end of Atlantic Avenue, so you can walk from a downtown lunch into the surf in about five minutes. Lifeguard towers, beach volleyball, and rented cabanas keep the public stretch busy from sunrise swimmers to sunset crowds, with warm Atlantic water and an easy break that suits boogie boards and first-time surfers. When you have had enough sun, Atlantic Avenue waits a block back with its sidewalk cafes, galleries, and a nightlife that runs late.

Beaches

Lake Worth Beach

Lake Worth Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

The William O. Lockhart Municipal Pier reaches almost a thousand feet over the Atlantic here, and the sandbars it kicks up give Lake Worth Beach the most reliable surf in South Florida, so you will find longboarders trading waves while families spread out on the wide white sand. Behind the beach the 1920s-style Casino Building anchors a boardwalk of taco counters, an ice cream window, and a saltwater pool, all a short walk from the funky galleries and Friday street parties downtown. Pay the pier toll to walk out past the anglers for the long view back at the surf, the swimmers, and the crowd.

Beaches

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, FL · Palm Beaches

This is the rare South Florida beach town you can walk end to end in flip-flops, where Anglin's Pier juts off the sand at the foot of Commercial Boulevard and the whole place orbits a short, sunny strip of cafes like the Aruba Beach Cafe. Drop your towel among the umbrellas and you are a hundred yards from the first ledge of a three-tier coral reef, close enough that snorkelers and shore divers just wade in from the beach instead of chartering a boat. Come morning the sand fills with sunbathers and the surf rolls in clear over the rocks, and by lunch the SeaSide tables are loud with people who walked over barefoot.

Beaches

Pompano Beach

Pompano Beach, FL · Palm Beaches

Pompano Beach is the wide, busy stretch where the Fisher Family Pier juts nearly 900 feet into the Atlantic and curls into the shape of a pompano fish at its tip, with a cutout eye you can peer through to spot what is swimming below. At its foot sits the Fishing Village, a packed beachfront strip of raw bars, taco joints, and the Pier 6 rooftop where you sip a cocktail over the surf line. The sand runs broad and lively under the lifeguard towers, the kind of beach where everyone shows up and the waves keep rolling in.