Sarasota audiotours

John Ringling chose Sarasota as the winter quarters for his circus empire in the 1920s, and the choice transformed a small Florida Gulf Coast town into something improbable: a center of European high art. Ringling imported Rubens paintings and Baroque sculpture along with circus performers, built a Venetian Gothic mansion called Ca' d'Zan on the bay, and opened a museum in 1931 that now holds the largest collection of Baroque art in the American South. The Ringling Museum complex -- the art museum, Ca' d'Zan, a circus museum, and grounds that include a historic asolo theater transported from Italy -- sits on 66 acres of bayfront that Ringling assembled when Sarasota was still small enough for one man to reshape.

The Sarasota School of Architecture emerged in the 1950s and 1960s when Paul Rudolph, Ralph Twitchell, and their colleagues developed a regional modernism adapted to Florida's light and heat -- deep overhangs, jalousie windows, and structure integrated with landscape.

Houses designed in this tradition remain scattered across the city's residential neighborhoods, recognizable by their clean lines and shaded terraces. The Umbrella House, the Cocoon House, and Paul Rudolph's own Riverview High School are landmarks of a movement that influenced American architecture well beyond Sarasota's borders.