Our Naples logo carries Florida's alligator over "1845," the year of statehood and the shared emblem of every Merlin Classics Florida place. The alligator is the Everglades in shorthand — and Naples sits right at the gateway to the Everglades, the Ten Thousand Islands, and Big Cypress, where the gladesman frontier meets the Gulf-coast resort. Printed black-and-white with the worn look of an old crate label or a piece of marsh-camp signage, it reads as Old Florida. What makes this one Naples is the place behind it: the 1886 winter colony, the 1888 pier, the swamp buggy, and the home by the Gulf.
Today Naples is one of the most polished resort cities on the Gulf — the paradise its founders advertised — but underneath the galleries and the golf is a genuine Old-Florida story: a winter colony a Louisville newspaperman named after an Italian bay, a pier that hurricanes keep testing and the town keeps rebuilding, and an Everglades frontier that gave the world the swamp buggy. Our Naples designs gather that identity into wearable form — the pier, the alligator, the 1886 founding, the Paradise Coast. From a newspaperman's American Bay of Naples to the pier that storms could never keep down — wear a little of the Old-Florida Paradise Coast.
Why People Visit Naples Florida
- Tour Historic Palm Cottage (1895), the oldest house in Naples and home of the Naples Historical Society.
- Visit the Naples Depot Museum, the restored 1927 Seaboard Air Line railroad station.
- Stroll Fifth Avenue South, the revitalized historic main street of galleries, courtyards, and palm-lined blocks.
- Walk the Naples Botanical Garden's themed landscapes and wetland boardwalks.
- See the historic Naples Pier site at the foot of 12th Avenue South, where the 1888 landmark is being rebuilt once more following Hurricane Ian (its latest reconstruction is underway).
