t A pretty, palm-lined stretch of Worth Avenue

Experience The Gold and Treasure Coasts

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For an insight into the Palm Beach lifestyle, Worth Avenue is compulsory viewing. While their employers toy over an Armani dress or an antique Ru ssian icon, chauffeurs keep the air conditioning running in the Rolls Royces outside. Stretching four fabulous blocks from Lake Worth to the Atlantic Ocean, it is the town’s best known street, which first became fashionable with the construction of the exclusive Everglades Club at the western end in 1918. This was the result of the collaboration between the architect Addison Mizner (see box) and Paris Singer, heir to the sewing machine fortune. Originally intended as a hospital for officers shellshocked during World War I, it never housed a single patient, and instead became the town’s social hub. Today, the building’s loggias and Spanish-style courtyards are still an upscale, members-only enclave.

Across the street are Via Mizner and Via Parigi, lined with colorful shops and restaurants. These interlinking pedestrian alleys were created by Mizner in the 1920s, and are Worth Avenue’s aesthetic highlights. Inspired by the back streets of Spanish villages, the lanes are a riot of arches, twisting flights of steps, fountains, and pretty courtyards. At the mouth of the alleys are the office tower and villa that Mizner designed for himself, connected by a walkway that forms the entrance to Via Mizner’s shopping area. The other vias off Worth Avenue are more modern but nonetheless charming.

Founded in 1936, the Society of the Four Arts incorporates two libraries and an auditorium for lectures, concerts, and films. The latter was originally part of a private club designed by Mizner, but Maurice Fatio’s Italianate library building is more striking. The grounds include modern sculptures.

Rising above Florida’s oldest golf course, this mammoth Italian Renaissance structure is the third hotel on the site, miraculously built in less than a year. The hotel has always been a focal point for the town’s social life, and is refreshingly welcoming to nonresidents. For an in-depth look, take the Wednesday afternoon guided tour with the “resident historian.” South of the hotel are three 19th-century wooden mansions, which were originally rented out to Palm Beach’s wealthier winter visitors.

Palm Beach’s high society usually hides away behind appropriately high hedges in multimillion-dollar mansions. Some of these were built by Addison Mizner and his imitators in the 1920s, but since then hundreds of others have sprung up in various architectural styles.

The most easily visible accommodation can be seen along South Ocean Boulevard, nicknamed “Mansion Row.” Mar-a-Lago (No. 1100) is Palm Beach’s grandest residence, with 58 bedrooms and three bomb shelters. Built by Joseph Urban and Marion Wyeth in 1927, it was bought in 1985 by Donald Trump, who converted it into a private club. The homes in the northern suburbs are more secluded. No. 1095 North Ocean Boulevard was used as a winter retreat by the Kennedy family until 1995. Glimpsing how the other half lives is widely discouraged by the minimum speed limit of 25 mph (40 km/h). Cycling is therefore an attractive option.

EXPERIENCE The Gold and Treasure Coasts