America's oldest city has improved greatly as it reaches 450

At the grand old age of 450, you'd think that St. Augustine ... the oldest continually occupied European settlement in North America and a city that makes its living off its history ... would have settled like a bug preserved in amber.  Not so.  In fact, it's a fair contest who's changed more in the past 47 years: the town, or me?

The place seared itself onto my memory as a small child, when my parents decided it was a logical stopping off point between the long drive from Missouri (14 hours by that point) and the final push to Fort Lauderdale (another five hours).  It was here that I got my first taste for castles, grand architecture and pirates, and started to see the grand play of history stretching back before the America I knew.  It's probably not an exaggeration to say that Saint Augustine lit the fires that eventually sent me to live in England.

In the late '60s and early '70s, however, it was a sleepy place.  The fort, then as now, was the centrepiece.  There was a dusty old museum, a rickety historic district of collapsing buildings (mostly private houses) and some derelict grand hotels.  Our sightseeing choices were always the fort, the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum (the first in the world was here) and the Old Jail.  I usually got to choose two; it was always the fort and something else.  I certainly don't remember crowds.  When I returned to school in the autumn, I was always unique in having travelled to this forgotten backwater.

These days, as you fight the crowds to get into the fort, you'd swear that every school child in America is sent here on a rotation.  The old town is a fully-restored wonderland of tourist boutiques buzzing with more visitors.  The grand hotels have all experienced renaissance.  Indeed, the town is such a tourist hot spot that there's now a 1,200-spot parking garage to leave the car before you explore, and you'd better get there before noon if you want a decent spot.

Whilst I missed the romantic atmosphere of mouldering decrepitude, and I could have done with a few less people packed into the fort, the changes are overwhelmingly positive.  Nobody should come to this part of Florida without visiting.

The logical place to start is the Castillo de San Marcos.  It's the oldest masonry fort in the United States, built in the late 17th century to replace older wooden models.  It bounced in use and ownership between the Spanish, the English and the Americans and, in the Civil War, between North and South.  These days, the National Park Service makes a real effort to bring the history to life, with displays throughout the building (the cannons are particularly popular) and costumed volunteer re-enactors.  Time it right and you can watch them fire a cannon a couple times a day.  There's also a lot here on how American Indians and women wove into the history of the place; things that wouldn't have troubled the curators of the early '70s.  If you're a child, frankly, none of this matters, because its round towers, pointed battlements and waterfront location make it look like the perfect pirate palace from every old swashbuckler you've ever seen.

The old town is just a few hundred feet away, across some tidy lawns.  Here, I admit to being somewhat disappointed.  I'd seen news reports that suggested St. Augustine had become a Spanish colonial version of Williamsburg, and I was ready for more costumed re-enactors in blacksmith's shops, taverns, churches, etc.  The serious history stops at the fort.  Architecturally, the old town is now a delightful mix of 17th century Spanish and 18th century English buildings, but their use is purely commercial.  It's basically the same mix you'd find in any tourist hot spot ... souvenirs, crafts, hats, jewellery, restaurants, ice cream parlours ... but without the thoughtfully selected offerings of Fernandina Beach's boutiques.  There, we lingered, shopped, and spent money.  Here, we appreciated the setting but weren't tempted to much browsing.  We had other sights to see.

Historic St. Augustine had two zeniths.  The first was the colonial era.  The second, the Gilded Age.  In the 1880s Henry Flagler, a phenomenally wealthy partner (with the Rockefellers) in Standard Oil, "discovered" the place and thought it had potential as a winter resort for other rich elites of the Northeast.  He commissioned grand hotels to house them, and built a railway to get them here.  Just as Disney basically created Orlando and kept a stranglehold on visitors in its early years, so Flagler did with St. Augustine.  The resort had four decades in the limelight, but fashion, war and the economy eventually conspired to shut the hotels down, and by the 1940s, the town had entered the decline I remember.

The grandest hotels of that era are now two must-see attractions.

Flagler's original hotel, the Ponce de Leon, is a fanciful palace built in Spanish Renaissance style, with no expense spared on details. Murals, stained glass windows, terra cotta and glazed tile detailing all add to the magnificence.  These days it sparkles like new.  In fact, at the moment the facade is sheathed in scaffolding for further renovations.  It's now the campus of Flagler College, founded in 1968, and must be one of the most beautiful places in the United States to get a liberal arts degree.  You can wander in to see the grand courtyard and the main lobby, but for more you'll need to book on to one of the tours given by current students.  This would certainly be worth the time, but you won't manage it in a day if you want to do the fort and the Lightner Museum across the street.

As an adult, this is my top sight in St. Augustine.  I've seen a lot of forts and castles since my childhood visits, and the Castillo de San Marcos suffers in comparison.  But I've yet to see anything exactly like Lightner's collection.

The eponymous founder was a wealthy Chicago publisher and collector, who started accumulating his treasures in the 1930s as so many families of the Gilded Age were going bust and liquidating their family palaces.  He bought.  Not just with an eye for the valuable, but for the quirky and the interesting.  Indeed, sometimes for the hideous.  (There's an English Victorian tall case clock, encrusted with characters telling the story of Dick Whittington, that is one of the ugliest pieces of furniture I've ever seen.)

Lighter bought the second of Flagler's hotels, the shuttered Alcazar, in the 1940s to house his collections.  He then left the museum to the city.  They didn't have the money to renovate the whole hotel or display the entire collection, leaving the dark, dusty and rather creepy museum I remember from childhood.  Even then, it was a remarkable mix of stuff.  Natural history displays (Churchill's lion and a taxidermised alligator), an Egyptian temple, a buttons collection, early music-making machines (twice a day they play a few for you), Victorian shop displays.  I remember my father sighing:  "this is the kind of collector I'd be if I were rich."

Today, much more of the hotel has been renovated and the collection is displayed in glory.  The main galleries are in what was the Alcazar's turkish baths.  Cut, blown and stained glass make a dramatic statement in this elegant, light-filled space.  For sheer visual impact, however, head to the ballroom ... which is actually a broad gallery encircling the old swimming pool, two stories up.  Sadly, the restoration didn't include what was once a glass roof, but enough light streams through the windows to give an impression of how glorious this place must have been.  Bands in alcoves on either side (John Philip Souza played here), guests promenading, dancing or pausing to gaze down at others enjoying the water below.  Today the old swimming pool is dry and holds a restaurant and some shops.  The ballroom/gallery shows off the larger pieces of Lightner's collection: monumental furniture, vast paintings and ceramics created for showy display.

There are few other museums that combine building and collection so well.  This is a snapshot of the gaudy conspicuous consumption of America's Gilded Age, laid out in the very rooms where the stories took place.

Where to Eat
If you're in the mood for something a bit more sophisticated than the usual tourist fare, try the Old City House Inn.  Their lunch menu offers an intriguing variety of tapas, much of it fish-based, to match the atmospheric Spanish revival building.  (It was built in the late 18th century, at the same time as the grand hotels nearby.)  Combine small plates, or opt for sandwiches and salads with a stylish flair.  Everything is deftly prepared and presented with style.  (See the example of the mussels tapas plate, right.)  The dark, traditional dining room offers a cool respite from a hot day; there's also a palm-filled courtyard if you want to eat outside.  The Old City House is just across the street from one side of the Lightner Museum, and is also a B&B.