Florida State University Ringling Center for the Cultural Arts

Florida State University Ringling Center for the Cultural Arts Review

Along Sarasota Bay, Ringling built a grand home that was patterned after Doges Palace in Venice. This exquisite mansion of 32 rooms, 15 bathrooms, and a 61-foot Belvedere Tower was completed in 1925, and today is the site of the Florida State University Ringling Center for the Cultural Arts. Its 8,000-square-foot terrace overlooks the dock where Ringling's wife, Mable, moored her gondola.

Within the center are the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art—a state-of-the-art museum with 500 years of art represented, including a world-renowned collection of Rubens's paintings and tapestries—and the Ringling Circus Museum, which displays circus memorabilia from its ancient roots to modern day.

The Tibbals Learning Center focuses on the American circus and the collection of Howard Tibbals, master model builder, who spent 40 years building the world's largest miniature circus. This impressive to-scale replica of the circa 1920s and '30s Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is authentic from the number of pancakes the circus cooks are flipping to the exact likenesses and costumes of the performers to the correct names of the animals marked on the miniature mess buckets. Tibbals's passion to re-create every exact detail continues in his on-site workshop, where kids can ask him questions and watch him carving animals and intricate wagons.

If you're looking for clown noses, ringmaster hats, and circus-themed T-shirts, don't leave before checking out the Ringling Museum of Art Store.