Boca Raton

Why go

Addison Mizner's unfinished dream — a 1926 resort city that the crash stopped halfway. The Boca Raton Resort — the pink hotel Mizner built as the Cloister Inn, still the town's centre. Beaches with a coastal ridge behind — the Atlantic dunes and Gumbo Limbo's hammock trails. A modernist second act — IBM built the first personal computer here in 1981.

The character

Addison Mizner, who had already given Palm Beach its look, bought two square miles of Boca Raton in 1925 and announced a resort city with a cathedral, canals, an airport and the world's most expensive hotel. He built the Cloister Inn — one hundred rooms, pink, Spanish — and the Administration Buildings, and then the Florida land boom collapsed in 1926, taking the scheme and Mizner's fortune with it. The city that grew afterwards followed his street plan and his palette without his ambition.

The modern town has a second, stranger claim: IBM's Boca Raton laboratory built the original IBM Personal Computer in 1981, a machine designed in a year by a small team allowed to ignore corporate procedure, and it created the industry standard the whole world then used. Today Boca is a prosperous city of a hundred thousand with strict signage rules — no billboards, no bright colours, everything low and pink-beige — a long beach, and the mixed inheritance of a fantasist architect and a computer that changed everything.

Places of character

Boca Raton Resort — Mizner's 1926 Cloister Inn at the core, with the tower and the Camino Real approach. Old Town Hall — Mizner's 1927 building, now the historical museum, with the gold-domed cupola. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center — boardwalks through coastal hammock, with a sea turtle rehabilitation centre. Red Reef Park and South Inlet Park — the beaches, with a rock reef close enough to snorkel from the sand. Mizner Park — the 1990s civic centre built on the site of a failed mall; an early and successful piece of new urbanism. Morikami Museum, Delray — a Japanese garden and museum twenty minutes north, from a 1900s farming colony.

The way to do it

See Mizner's surviving buildings first — the resort, Old Town Hall, the Administration Buildings — because everything else is a footnote to them. Snorkel the rock reef at Red Reef, which is unusual for Florida's east coast. And go north to Delray for the Japanese garden, which nobody expects here.

One perfect day

Beach at Red Reef early, snorkelling the rock reef straight off the sand with parrotfish and the odd turtle. Coffee, then Mizner's Old Town Hall for the museum and the story of the city that never got built. Walk or drive the Camino Real to the pink resort and into the lobby. Lunch at Mizner Park. Afternoon at Gumbo Limbo on the boardwalks with the turtle tanks, or north to the Morikami gardens for an hour of raked gravel and bonsai. Back for the ocean at five. Dinner in Delray Beach, which is livelier than Boca and fifteen minutes away.

Grand hotels

The Boca Raton — Mizner's 1926 hotel, restored, with the tower, the beach club and a half-mile of private sand. Colony Hotel, Delray — a 1926 survivor twenty minutes north, family-run and unrenovated in the best sense.

When to go

Best expression: December to April, dry and warm with the ocean comfortable. Consider: October and November, quieter and cheaper with the same weather. Avoid if possible: July to September, the humid peak and hurricane season.

The frame

Ideal stay 2 nights · Minimum 1 night · Best arrival by car from Fort Lauderdale, thirty minutes · Airport FLL 35 km, PBI 40 km · Walkability Mizner Park and the beach; the rest by car · Best without a car no