Collier County is home to a wide range of museums. You will find everything from the world class Baker Museum of Art to small museums you wouldn't think of.
Baker Museum of Art
The Baker Museum is one of the foremost fine art museums in Southwest Florida. Emphasizing modern and contemporary art, the museum hosts several traveling exhibitions annually to complement installations of works from its permanent collections. Dedicated to stewardship and scholarship, the museum provides world-class exhibitions and educational opportunities for Southwest Florida’s diverse community.
The Baker Museum, the visual arts commitment of multidisciplinary organization Artis—Naples, includes a three-story museum with 17 galleries, an art library with a collection of more than 4,200 books, and a 17,650-square-foot addition designed by Weiss/Manfredi and opened in 2019. Special features include four large-scale installations by popular glass artist Dale Chihuly and a notable collection of outdoor sculpture installed throughout the 8.5-acre Kimberly K. Querrey and Louis A. Simpson Cultural Campus.
Providing in-depth exhibitions of world-class artwork and opportunities for educational engagement, The Baker Museum invites you to begin your cultural adventure today.
Golisano Children's Museum of Naples
Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples (CMON) is a brain-building powerhouse and Southwest Florida’s first museum devoted to children and families. This safe and wonderful place inspires children and families to have fun while learning together.
CMON is a two-story, 30,000 square foot cultural institution including permanent and temporary interactive, fully accessible exhibits that blend state-of-the-art technology with a replication of the natural world and human communities. Developed by experts in child psychology, this experimental play fosters creativity, curiosity, empathy, and self-esteem.
Collier County Museum
Nestled on five acres of native Florida landscaping, the Collier Museum at Government Center offers exhibits and galleries that capture the full panorama of local history.
Stalk prehistoric mastodons with Florida’s first big-game hunters, or travel even further back in time, when colossal sharks cruised the warm tropical seas that once covered Southwest Florida. See ancient tools and ceremonial masks and dig up the facts about the Calusa Indian civilization that flourished here. Trace America’s little-known wars in South Florida, the heroic journey of the Seminole people, and the origins behind traditional crafts like patchwork, once laboriously stitched together on hand-cranked sewing machines.
Exhibits also explore the daily lives – and utter isolation – of early settlers and their families as they arrived on this watery frontier a hundred years ago and the vision of a self-made multi-millionaire who dreamed of taming a wilderness swampland the size of Delaware. Along the way, meet the hardy and colorful folk – the cattlemen, clam diggers, trail blazers, plume hunters, hermits, loggers, railroaders, rum runners, Crackers and Indian traders – who wrote the pioneer history of Collier County.
Pack a picnic and linger a while in the museum’s shady backyard. Then do a little exploring on your own around our native gardens, The Deuce steam engine, historic Kokomis boat, rugged swamp buggy, restored Naples cottages, reconstructed Seminole War Fort, World War II Sherman tank, and more.
Naples Depot Museum
Long hidden on the fringe of Florida’s Gulf Coast and overlooked by developers until well into the 1880s, Naples’ catalyst for settlement finally arrived forty years later when two rival railroads rolled into town within ten days of each other.
Set in Naples’ restored Seaboard Air Line Railway passenger station, the Naples Depot Museum welcomes visitors back to the railroading boom days of the Roaring Twenties and explains how generations of Southwest Floridians used technology and transportation to conquer a vast and seemingly impenetrable frontier.
Seminole dugout canoes, a mule wagon, antique swamp buggy, restored rail cars and exciting interactive exhibits tell the story of how trade and travel transformed Naples from a napping village of 300 souls into today’s glittering Gulf Coast resort.
The Naples Depot Museum is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is conveniently located in downtown Naples.
Also located on site is the Naples Train Museum. This privately operated museum features an interactive model layout and train ride for children. For more information and hours of operation, please visit their website at http://www.naplestrainmuseum.org.
Palm Cottage
Located down the street from the Naples Fishing Pier, the historic Palm Cottage is a great place to learn more about this iconic landmark. Full of furnishing and authentic decor, a tour of the Palm Cottage by knowledgeable guides provides an in-depth about the early homes of the residents of Naples. Built in 1885, the fully restored Palm Cottage stands in its original state today.
Said to be the oldest house in Naples, the antiques-filled 3,500 square foot Palm Cottage is a rare example of tabby mortar construction. The cottage is open for docent-guided tours year round. Christmas time is especially beautiful when the cottage is lit up in lights giving it a nostalgic and romantic glow.
If you are looking for a quintessential spot to unravel the interesting history of Naples Florida, make sure to book both the Historic Palm Cottage house tour and a walking tour of the Naples Historic District. Together they’ll enhance your appreciation of the local history.
Marco Island Historical Museum
Long famous for its Key Marco Cat — one of the most remarkable and influential discoveries in North American archaeology — the Marco Island Historical Museum explores Southwest Florida’s Calusa Indians and brings this vanished civilization to life with informative displays and an exciting recreated village scene.
Permanent and traveling exhibits trace the settlement of this subtropical island paradise from its early pioneer roots as a fishing village, pineapple plantation and clam cannery, through its explosive growth and development in the 1960s by the Miami-based Deltona Corporation.
Museum of the Everglades
Take a leisurely drive across the “River of Grass” and spend a lazy afternoon exploring the rich history of nearby Everglades City. Once accessible only by boat, this remote frontier trading town took an ambitious new turn in 1923 as the base of operations for county founder Barron Gift Collier’s construction of the Tamiami Trail (present-day US Highway 41) – a road across the Everglades.
First opened in 1927 as a commercial laundry, the building that now houses Museum of the Everglades is one of several historic structures still standing as a testament to the town’s time as a once-bustling center of business and the region’s first County seat. The museum’s permanent and rotating exhibits provide visitors with an in-depth look at over 2,000 years of human history in the area and tell the stories of those adventurous enough – and tenacious enough – to settle “Florida’s Last Frontier”.
Faithfully restored to its original, 1920s Collier-era appearance, the museum is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located 35 miles east of downtown Naples and less than 100 miles from Miami.
Immokalee Pioneer Museum at Robert's Ranch
Immokalee, Collier County’s largest inland community, has long been linked with sprawling cattle ranches and a thriving agricultural economy. First occupied by the Calusa Indians and later by the Seminole, the area has seen a colorful mix of hunters, trappers, cowmen, missionaries and Indian traders since it was first settled in 1872. Early pioneers renamed the town “Immokalee” in 1897 after a Seminole word meaning “my home” or “his home.”
Originally home to cattleman Robert Roberts and his family, this 13-acre historic site and museum (the longest running ranch in South Florida) provides visitors with a rare opportunity to experience daily working life on a Southwest Florida pioneer homestead and citrus grove from the early 1900s.
Exhibits, programs, and fifteen carefully preserved original buildings and features tell the story of the cow hunters, ranchers and pioneer-spirited families who struggled to tame this vast wilderness prairie on the edge of the Big Cypress Swamp.
The Immokalee Pioneer Museum at Roberts Ranch is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located in downtown Immokalee, a scenic 44-mile drive east of Naples.
Naples Holocaust Museum
This gem of a Naples museum recalls one of the world’s darkest eras and its relationship to many local southwest Florida residents. Tucked in an unlikely strip mall, the Naples Holocaust Museum is dedicated to preserving and exhibiting unique works of art and telling the stories of the Holocaust through thousands of photos, artifacts, exhibits and unique events.
The museum’s mission is to impart the lessons learned from the Holocaust devastation and educate visitors through a series of moving exhibits and artifact displays. Over 1,000 World War II and Holocaust artifacts and original photographs displayed chronologically from the rise of Nazism to Allied Liberation and the Nuremberg Trials.
Many of the artifacts have been donated or permanently loaned by local Survivors, Liberators, and other dedicated people.
While one exhibit is devoted to the Holocaust survivors and their families, an authentic ten ton WWII box car is situated in the parking lot as an educational outreach tool for the general public.
The museum also holds traveling exhibits to enhance community outreach. Daily Docent-guided tours for the public take place at 1.30pm and last around 90 minutes.
The Revs Institute
The Revs Institute is one of a kind educational institution dedicated solely to the conservation, preservation and restoration of rare and significant automobiles built between 1896 and 1995. Realizing the value of preserving cars in their original condition, this unique Naples Florida museum allows visitors unhindered access to over 100 pristine automobiles to provide an intimate historic experience.
But if you’re looking for car museums in Naples Florida, you’ll find much more than that. The automobiles on display at Revs are some of the rarest and most important cars ever built at anytime, anywhere. They are the ones that famously blazed technical pathways, redefined aesthetic standards, made history, and changed the world.
All the vehicles are fully operational and the best way to explore the sprawling 80,000 square feet of space in Naples is through a two hour guided tour.
To ensure that the collection remains viable for many years, the institute has gone to great lengths to make the facility dust and pollution free. Only visitors holding advance tickets for scheduled times may tour the Museum.