On a breezy morning in late February, before the Florida “season” was under way, the wide beach of Sarasota’s Siesta Key was deserted except for us and a woman out walking her dog. Super-fine, pure quartz sand, almost unbearably white in the sun, cushioned our steps and sifted through our toes like cool talcum. The Sarasota I had imagined, a mild and tranquil retreat, was all around.
A day earlier, I had walked around a downtown plump with cultural institutions, including a theatre, a ballet company and a resident opera. Healthy-looking middle-aged couples in matching chinos and cashmeres, worn against what passes for a winter chill in Florida, chatted outside the massive new public library and strolled across garden squares.
Sarasota is almost a filmset cliché of what a conservative enclave for well-heeled pensioners might look like, with serious yachts bobbing in the marinas and pastel-coloured houses lining the golf courses. My guide from the local tourist office did her best to steer me past the rows of immaculately groomed lawns, encouraging me to discover Sarasota’s colourful, multilayered past.
I was taking some persuading.
Then she led me over weathered planks through the scrub pines at the top of the beach and, suddenly, I could see it.
Summer home of “The Greatest Show on Earth”
In its heyday at the turn of the 20th century, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus toured America in a 100-car train carrying hundreds of animals. In winter the self-billed “Greatest Show on Earth” headed south to Sarasota, where the mild climate and grassy savannahs suited the performers and their (mainly) African menagerie equally well.
Circus folk spread across several of Sarasota’s seven keys and nearby barrier islands, eventually turning the area into the major dance, circus training and performance centre that it remains. Sarasota still has a resident circus and a training programme for schoolchildren; and throughout the year, most American and international circus companies do a Sarasota season.
Time for us to go in search of John Ringling, the larger-than-life impresario who started it all. We found him, in spirit at least, at the Ringling Museums, a three-attraction complex on 66 banyan-shaded acres.
Summer home of “The Greatest Show on Earth”
In its heyday at the turn of the 20th century, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus toured America in a 100-car train carrying hundreds of animals. In winter the self-billed “Greatest Show on Earth” headed south to Sarasota, where the mild climate and grassy savannahs suited the performers and their (mainly) African menagerie equally well.
Circus folk spread across several of Sarasota’s seven keys and nearby barrier islands, eventually turning the area into the major dance, circus training and performance centre that it remains. Sarasota still has a resident circus and a training programme for schoolchildren; and throughout the year, most American and international circus companies do a Sarasota season.
Time for us to go in search of John Ringling, the larger-than-life impresario who started it all. We found him, in spirit at least, at the Ringling Museums, a three-attraction complex on 66 banyan-shaded acres.
