The 20 Best Things to Do in Naples, Florida

Naples is small enough to see properly in three days and rich enough to keep a resident busy for thirty years. What follows is the list we actually give people — ordered by how reliably each one delivers, not by how much it advertises. Roughly the first half is land-side; the water sits where it belongs, near the top, because on this coast it is the thing everything else is arranged around.

1. Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens

A 43-acre zoo built inside a 1919 botanical garden, which is why the paths run under strangler figs and bamboo rather than across concrete. Honey badgers, Florida panthers, giraffe feeding, and islands of lemurs and gibbons at the centre of the grounds. Open 9am to 4:30pm; go at opening in summer because the animals check out by eleven. Collier County residents get free Saturdays several times a year.

2. Naples Botanical Garden

170 acres of cultivated tropical gardens — Brazilian, Asian, Caribbean, Florida — plus a genuinely wild preserve with unpaved trails through rare coastal scrub. Fogg Café does a decent breakfast until 2pm. Members get in early, which in April is the whole ballgame. Two hours minimum; three if you walk the lake path.

3. A private boat day

The one thing on this list that people describe months later without prompting. Naples Bay, the Port Royal canals and the barrier islands are not visible from any road, and the barrier island beaches have no bridge at all. Going out with a local captain is the version worth planning around.

4. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

A 2.25-mile boardwalk through the largest remaining old-growth bald cypress forest on earth, run by Audubon, about 45 minutes northeast of downtown. Wood storks, alligators, barred owls, and in a good year a ghost orchid the volunteers will point at. Go early. Bring bug spray from May onward and take the shorter loop if it's raining.

5. Naples Pier and the Old Naples beach walk

The 1888 pier is the town's front door: pelicans, free fishing without a licence, and the best sunset viewing platform in Collier County. Park on Gordon Drive, walk the beach north to Lowdermilk and back, and time the return for the last forty minutes of light.

6. Artis-Naples and the Baker Museum

The cultural campus on Pelican Bay Boulevard: a 1,400-seat hall with the Naples Philharmonic in residence, plus the Baker Museum's modern and contemporary collection, glass by Chihuly, and a rotating exhibition programme that punches well above a town of 20,000. Check the calendar before you book anything else in season.

7. Fifth Avenue South

The main event for walking, eating and people-watching. Best between 5pm and 8pm, when the light comes down the side streets and the outdoor tables fill. Park in the free garage on Sixth Street and forget about the car.

8. Third Street South

Quieter, older, prettier — courtyards, banyans, and the Saturday morning farmers market behind the shops from November to April. This is where Naples looks most like itself.

9. Big Cypress and the Everglades drive

Drive east on US-41 and inside forty minutes the strip malls stop and the sawgrass starts. Big Cypress National Preserve, the Oasis Visitor Center alligator ditch, the Kirby Storter boardwalk. A half-day, best in the dry season when wildlife concentrates around the remaining water.

10. Golisano Children's Museum of Naples (C'mon)

Ten thousand square feet of hands-on exhibits at North Collier Regional Park. The reliable rainy-morning answer for anyone travelling with a child under ten, and the adjoining Sun-N-Fun Lagoon water park handles the afternoon.

11. Collier Museum at Government Center

Free, five acres, and much better than it sounds: Calusa artefacts, a Seminole War fort reconstruction, a steam engine, a swamp buggy and a Sherman tank in the yard. Forty-five minutes that explains why the rest of the county looks the way it does.

12. Naples Depot Museum

The 1927 Seaboard Air Line station downtown, restored, with private rail cars outside. Small, free, and the quickest way to understand how a mosquito-ridden fishing outpost became a winter resort.

13. Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park

The best public beach in the county: a mile of sand, real dune ecology, shade at the north end and a pass that pulls fish through on the outgoing tide. Arrive before 10am in season or the gate closes on capacity.

14. Clam Pass and the boardwalk

A three-quarter-mile boardwalk through mangroves to a beach with a tram if you'd rather not walk it. The estuary either side is where you see wading birds, and the tidal channel at the beach end is shallow enough for children to sit in.

15. The Baker Park and Gordon River Greenway

Newer, and mostly used by residents: a riverfront park connected to miles of boardwalk and paved trail running north past the zoo. Good running, good birding, and the only place downtown where you get the river at eye level for free.

16. Tin City

Tin-roofed 1920s clam-processing sheds turned into shops and seafood on the Gordon River. Touristy and knows it, but the setting is genuine and it's the natural end point of a downtown afternoon.

17. Naples Botanical's rival: the Naples Preserve

Nine acres of scrub habitat on Tamiami Trail with a short boardwalk and gopher tortoises. Free, ten minutes, and a useful reminder of what all this looked like before it was a town.

18. Waterside Shops and Mercato

Waterside is the high-end shopping under the banyans; Mercato is where residents go for a film, a late dinner and a decent bar. Both handle a hot afternoon and neither requires planning.

19. The Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center

Small, serious and thoughtfully curated, including the Boxcar exhibit. An hour that visitors consistently rank higher than they expected to.

20. Sunset, wherever you are

Naples faces due west, which means the sun sets into open Gulf 365 days a year. The pier and Lowdermilk are the classic spots; the beach at Delnor-Wiggins is emptier; and from a boat anchored off Keewaydin it is a different event entirely — the whole horizon, no buildings, no crowd.