St Augustine is the oldest European town in the USA, founded in 1565, 20 years before the Roanoke colony and 55 years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed. However, it has been blanked out of American history books, because the people who founded it spoke Spanish and not English. The Spanish got corn tortillas and beans from the Native Americans, while the Pilgrims got turkey and sweet potatoes. If we really understood American history we would all be eating tacos for Thanksgiving dinner.

St Augustine is proud of its complex history. From 1565 to 1763 it remained in Spanish hands. The treaty of Paris turned it over to the British, in exchange for Havana. Ignoring the minor distraction of the American revolution it remained in British hands until 1783 when they decided they didn’t want it any more and gave it back to the Spanish. The Spanish finally got bored with it in 1821. It became part of the USA, and apart from a few months in 1861 when it was in Confederate hands, it has remained part of the USA to this day. You will note that it was Spanish for quite a bit longer than it has been American.

It was James Branch Cabell who said that he loved all the historic buildings in St Augustine, as he had watched most of them being built. The town was regularly burned down over the years, and the locals still grumble about the time Sir Francis Drake torched the place in 1586. The most recent devastating fires were 1895 and 1914. Still, every time the canny St Augustiners rebuilt in the traditional (flammable) style and the tourists are none the wiser.

It seems that every third building is a museum. There’s the Father Miguel O’Reilly House Museum, the Ximenez-Fatio House Museum, the Spanish Military Hospital Museum, the Oldest House Museum Complex, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the Governor’s House Cultural Center and Museum, the Villa Zorayda Museum, Wolf’s Museum Of Mystery LLC, the Pirate Soul Museum, the Medieval Torture Collection, Potter’s Wax Museum, Tovar House, the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, and the Lightner Museum, all in a area of about a quarter of a square mile. A bit further out there’s a genuine honest to goodness castle with working cannons, Ponce De Leon’s Fountain of Youth, the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, and the Alligator Farm.

If you want to start your own museum there the historic old jail building is for sale at $1.5 million.

I’m sure a converted jail cell would be a winner on Air BnB.

There’s a cathedral, too, which would be the oldest christian church in America if it hadn’t burned down so many times.

Bits of the walls date from 1793, but most of the inside was done in the late 19th and early 20th century. Back then St Augustine was a favorite wintering spot for the wealthy of the Gilded Age, and their taste in churches matched their equally bad taste in art, furniture, and labor relations.

The church is a basilica, or papal church, which means that it gets to have the pope’s personal beach umbrella on the left of the altar there.

The font is a copy of the font in Spain that Ponce de Leon was baptized in, in 1474.

According to the charming guide, one visitor attempted to use the holy water in it to wash the muddy feet of her little doggy. Good to know that its tiny paws are now mud free and protected against vampires.

They have a 3D portrait of St Augustine himself, patron saint of youthful debauchery.

Why are his ears so big? I asked the guide but she did not know. Did the artist have an ear fetish? Is there a matching portrait of St Noddy? I googled “St Augustine big ears” and got a story about a cockroach crawling into a woman’s ear, because Florida. Write it off as one of life’s little mysteries.

On to the Lightner Museum, housed in an old hotel building.

Lightner was a Chicago publisher and collector who bought up hundreds of other collections during the great depression. It didn’t really matter what sort of collection. Spoons? Sure!

A glass steam engine? Why not?

Ceramics of dubious taste? Love ceramics.

More ceramics? Can’t have too many ceramics.

Pepper pots, sea shells, matchbox labels, buttons, embroidery? Absolutely.

Mechanical musical instruments with broken springs? Bring em on.

Statue of a girl being molested by geese? Can’t live without that.

The 360 degree shower is not actually part of the collection, it was left over from the hotel’s health spa. Let’s keep it anyway.

The hotel’s indoor swimming pool? Let’s turn it into a restaurant. Would m’sieur like a table at the shallow end?

This painting has two labels next to it.

Finally, the Rock Island Line in mother of pearl. Every home should have one of those.

Mister Lightner is buried in the grounds next to his collection. Human remains? Sure, add that to the collection, too.