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.
Before the golf courses and the galleries, there was a newspaperman and a pier. In 1886 a Louisville newspaper publisher bought 3,712 acres of Gulf-edge wilderness, named it after a bay in Italy, and sold it to Northern families as paradise. In 1888 he built a pier into the Gulf of Mexico — a dock that storms have taken down and the town has rebuilt time and again. That's the Old-Florida story underneath the Paradise Coast: the winter colony, the pier, the swamp buggy, and Fifth Avenue South — and this page tells it.
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).
