Naples

For thousands of years before European colonisation the Calusa lived along this coast, from Charlotte Harbor to Cape Sable. Juan Ponce de León met them in 1513, and they resisted the first Spanish attempts to settle Florida. In the early 18th century slave raids by Muscogee and Yamasee raiders allied with Carolina's settlers drove most of the remaining Calusa south and east.

Naples was founded in 1886 by John Stuart Williams, a former Confederate general and senator from Kentucky, and the Louisville newspaper publisher Walter N. Haldeman. Magazines of the 1870s and 1880s had praised the area's mild climate and abundant fish and compared it with Italy, and promoters claimed the bay surpassed the Bay of Naples, so the name stuck. In 1888, with about 80 residents, the town opened its pier. Collier County was created in 1923, the railway arrived in 1927 and the Tamiami Trail linked Naples to Miami in 1928, but the expected boom was delayed by the Depression and the Second World War, when the army built an airfield that is now the town's airport.

Naples became a city in 1949. In the 1950s the Chicago advertising pioneer John Glenn Sample dredged Naples Bay into the canals of Port Royal, and similar waterfront districts followed. Passenger trains stopped in 1971. Hurricanes have marked recent decades: Wilma in 2005, Irma in 2017, which came ashore at Marco Island, Ian in 2022, which hit Naples hard, wrecked the pier and caused close to a billion dollars of damage in the city, and Milton in 2024.

Naples calls itself the "Golf Capital of the World", with more golf holes than any other city in Florida and the second most per head in the country, and the LPGA's CME Group Tour Championship has been played here since 2012. Pickleball has spread so fast that the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships have been held at East Naples Community Park every year since 2016, earning the town the title of the sport's world capital. An older, homegrown sport is the swamp buggy race: the high-wheeled vehicles were invented in Naples for crossing the Everglades, and racing them through mud began after a parade in 1949.

The town supports an arts scene unusually large for its size. The Naples Philharmonic and the Baker Museum share the Artis—Naples campus, and the Naples Players, Gulfshore Playhouse, Opera Naples and a Shakespeare festival stage seasons; Gallery Row and the streets of Old Naples are lined with commercial galleries.

The tone is set by retirees and winter visitors, the snowbirds who have long shaped Florida's Gulf Coast. Life is quiet, outdoor and orderly — beach walks at sunset, boating, fishing and golf — and wealth is evident in the waterfront estates and the many charitable organisations. The nearness of the Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands also makes the town popular with ecotourists.

About 19,000 people lived in the city at the 2020 census, and about 376,000 in the wider Naples–Marco Island metropolitan area, which takes in the suburbs of Collier County. The city's population is among the oldest in the country: the median age was 67, more than half of residents were 65 or over, and nearly half of all housing units were recorded as vacant — seasonal homes empty for much of the year.

Tourism is the economic base, as real estate and farming once were. Collier County is one of the wealthiest areas in the United States — a 2012 report ranked Naples second in the country for its share of millionaires — and that wealth supports many small non-profit organisations. Two hospital systems serve the area, and inland Immokalee, in the east of the county, is home to many migrant farmworkers and their families.

The year has two rhythms. From December to April roads, restaurants and golf courses are crowded; in summer the heat and afternoon storms empty the town. Hurricanes are the defining worry, and soaring home-insurance costs after repeated storms weigh on residents across Florida.

Seafood from the Gulf is the core of eating in Naples. Grouper, served grilled, blackened or fried in a sandwich, shrimp and smoked fish dip appear on menus all along the Gulf coast. Stone crab claws, cracked and served cold with a mustard sauce, are the luxury of the season from October to May.

Tin City, the old fishermen's wharf on the river, keeps waterside seafood restaurants, and boats still bring in catches from the Gulf and the mangrove waters to the south. Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South hold many of the town's restaurants, from pubs and sidewalk bistros to steak houses and fine dining, and a beach bar at sunset is a local habit.

Florida's own desserts and drinks are everywhere: Key lime pie, the state pie, made with the juice of small, tart limes set with condensed milk in a crumb crust, and fresh orange juice.