The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art at Sarasota, Florida

We decided to take a day trip to the Ringling museum in Sarasota, FL.  In case the name Ringling has a familiar name it is because it is one and the same as Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.


If you saw the PBS special last year with Jackie Ivanko (spelling) it was videotaped on the grounds.  It is a magnificent place.  The entire John Ringling estate has been turned into a wonderful museum.  


I will include a few photos here to give you and idea of what we saw -- and there was much I could not possibly do justice to with my camera.

Sarasota is a two-hour drive from our home, so if you come visit us --this is one place you might want to go see.

A front view of the winter home of John and Mable Ringling.  It was completed on Christmas Eve 1926 at a cost of about $1.5 million dollars.  John originally gave Mable $250,000 for the house.  Like a good wife, she came in slightly over budget. 

We were not allowed to take flash photos, so some of my photos were not the best.  This is the ballroom.

This is the hand-painted ceiling of the ballroom.  The artist lived on the property in a smaller house for over two years as he did many paintings on ceilings and walls.  Fast forward to the 21st century and the excellent docent who led our tour recalled the time recently when one of her visitors identified herself as the daughter of the artist who did the ceilings.  Now that was an amazing day for her. 

This was a bar from St. Louis that John Ringling bought during Prohibition and had it taken apart and re-assembled at Ca' d'Zan in Sarasota. 

John Ringling's bedroom.

Mable Ringling's bathroom

The courtyard was at the center of the home.  The chandelier was from the original Waldorf Hotel in New York City. 

There is an outstanding fine dining restaurant on the premises called Treviso.  I give it 3.5 stars.  We had lunch on the restaurant terrace. 

The grounds are beautiful.  The lower photo is of a cluster of Banyon trees.  


On the way home I saw something I wish I could have documented with a photo.  We passed a car.  The driver was holding a salad with her left hand and using a fork with her right had.  We were moving at 70 MPH.  A friend of mine says: "you can't fix stupid."