St. Augustine for families

Best museums

St. Augustine's museums divide cleanly into two kinds: the historic buildings and homes that small steward-institutions and the National Park Service keep as the literal fabric of the city's past, and the privately-run thematic museums that mine the pirate-and-treasure mythology for a more theatrical experience. The list below favours the first kind — the actual buildings, kept by the people who care most about them — with a single concession to the genre that built the city's souvenir economy. These are picks for someone who has a half-day or two and wants to leave with a real sense of the city's stacked layers of military and domestic history, not just a fridge magnet of one stop. Bring walking shoes that tolerate uneven historic floors; bring water in the warm months; do not try to do all six in a single day, especially the one that sits well outside the central cluster and asks for its own trip.