Situated on the eastern edge of the Pinellas Peninsula, ST PETERSBURG may be only twenty miles from Tampa, but location is about the only thing these cities share. Declared the healthiest place in the US in 1885, it wasted no time in wooing the recuperating and the retired, at one point putting five thousand green benches on its streets to take the weight off elderly legs. Although it remains a mecca for the retired, St Petersburg has worked hard to attract young blood. In addition to rejuvenating the pier, which now offers something for every age, its diverse selection of museums and plethora of art galleries has contributed to its emergence as one of Florida's richest cultural cities. Most remarkable of all, the town has acquired a major collection of works by Salvador Dali making St Petersburg a good option if you are looking for a break from the beaches nine miles west on the Gulf Coast.

The Salvador Dali Museum , 1000 S 3rd St (MonSat 9.30am5.30pm, Sun noon5.30pm; $8; tel 727/822-6270; www.salvadordalimuseum.org ), stores more than a thousand paintings from the collection of a Cleveland industrialist, A. Reynolds Morse, who struck up a friendship with the artist in the 1940s. Free tours begin whenever sufficient people gather, and trace a chronological path around the works, from the artist's early experiments with Impressionism and Cubism to the seminal Surrealist canvas Persistence of Memory .

Once you've done Dali, the quarter-mile-long pier , jutting from the end of Second Avenue N, is the town's central focus. It often hosts browsable arts and crafts exhibitions, and the inverted-pyramid-like building at its head holds five stories of restaurants, shops and fast-food counters. The pier is also home to Great Explorations (MonSat 10am8pm, Sun 11am6pm; $4), a hands-on science museum for all ages. At the foot of the pier, the Museum of History (MonSat 10am5pm, Sun 15pm; $5) modestly recounts St Petersburg's early twentieth-century heyday as a winter resort. Nearby, the Museum of Fine Arts , 255 Beach Drive NE (TuesSat 10am5pm, Sun 15pm; $6, free on Sun), holds a superlative collection ranging from pre-Columbian art through Asian and African to European Old Masters. The Florida International Museum , half a mile east of the pier at 100 2nd St (daily during exhibition periods 9am6pm; $14.50; reserve at 1-800/777-9882, www.floridamuseum.org ), occupies an entire block and, for about a year at a time, displays exhibitions from renowned museums all over the world.