The BigTree Blog Kids and family
The Ringling for Kids: A Miniature Circus and a Bayfront Palace
John Ringling's 66-acre estate has a mansion, an art museum, banyan trees to climb under and the world's largest miniature circus.
John and Mable Ringling made their winter home on Sarasota Bay in the 1920s, and their estate is now The Ringling, the State Art Museum of Florida. Grown-ups come for the paintings, including grand works by Peter Paul Rubens. Kids come for the circus.
The Circus Museum tells the story of the big top with costumes, wagons and posters, but the showstopper is the Howard Bros. Circus Model, a hand-built miniature circus with thousands of tiny pieces, from performers to cooks to elephants. Children press their noses to the glass for ages.
Outside, the grounds are a playground of their own: enormous banyan trees, Mable's rose garden and the bayfront terrace of Ca' d'Zan, the Ringlings' Venetian-style mansion completed in 1926.
It is easy to spend a whole morning here, and the Historic Asolo Theater on the grounds, an 18th-century theater brought over from Italy, is worth a peek too.