Vizcaya Museum & Gardens
Bay-front Italianate villa staged with European antiques to fake centuries of family history.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Vizcaya Museum & Gardens in Miami opens with a March 1971 nighttime heist, when three strangers slipped past watchmen and made off with a silver bowl once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte. It traces how farm-machinery heir James Deering built the bay-front villa between 1914 and 1922 to look like it had been collected over centuries by some grand European family, sending his design director scouring Europe to fill it. Listen in the rooms nearest the bay, where the display cases once stood.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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