If you have a car, your own or a rented one, drive north on Highway AlA from Fort Lauderdale to explore the beach communities of Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, and Palm Beach.

Here, you can see how the other half lives as you take in the luxurious homes of the rich and famous.

Boca Raton

Boca Raton, one of the fastest-growing communities along Florida's southeast coast, attracts large numbers of retirees and golfers. The name, meaning “mouth of the rat,” may have originated with Spanish pirates, who feared this inlet for its jagged rocks.

Boca Raton's Mediterranean architecture goes back to Addison Mizner, who designed the mansions of Palm Beach's wealthy through the 1920s. Mizner arrived in Boca Raton in 1925 at the peak of Florida's real estate boom, and in partnership with his brother, Wilson, bought 1,600 acres of farmland and began selling plots of a future community. The Mizner brothers envisioned a luxury hotel, gondola-filled canals, and a cathedral dedicated to their mother. Unfortunately, the land boom ended before they barely began to build their exclusive community, and they returned to Palm Beach embarrassed.

But the few buildings the Mizners did complete left their mark on Boca Raton. Their million-dollar Cloister Inn, a pink palace of marble columns, sculptured fountains, and carefully aged wood (“distressed” by their workmen's hobnail boots), is now the Boca Raton Hotel and Club. You can take a guided tour, run by the Boca Raton Historical Society between December and April, for $4. (561-395-8655)

Palm Beach

Palm Beach has been synonymous with unlimited wealth and luxury for over a century. It got its name from its palms, which first came ashore in 1878 when the Providencia, a Spanish ship bound from Trinidad to Cádiz, ran aground, spilling its cargo of coconuts. The island's few residents planted the coconuts, giving birth to Palm Beach.

When Henry Morrison Flagler, John D. Rockefeller's partner in Standard Oil, saw this palm-tree-lined island in 1893, he decided that Palm Beach would make the perfect winter escape for America's rich and famous. He extended his East Coast Railroad south from Saint Augustine, and on February 11, 1894 opened the world's largest wooden resort, the immense Italianate Royal Poinciana Hotel, with 1,150 rooms and a staff of 1,400. There were more workers than the population of any town on the coast, so Flagler built West Palm Beach, on the mainland side of Lake Worth, to house them. They pampered the likes of Rockefellers, Astors, Carnegies, Morgans, and Vanderbilts on Palm Beach Island, transporting them around the island in rickshaw-like vehicles and catering to their every whim.

Based on the success of his first hotel, Flagler built a second, the Palm Beach Inn, on the beach of the Royal Poinciana. Soon guests began requesting rooms “over by the breakers.” So when Flagler doubled the hotel's size, he renamed it The Breakers. But during the expansion in 1903, fire destroyed it. In February 1904, it reopened with rooms starting at $4 per night, including three meals. In March 1925, fire again destroyed the hotel. Rebuilt on a grander scale in 1926, its exterior resembled the Villa Medici in Rome, with twin Belvedere towers with graceful arches and a fountain in the central courtyard like one in Florence's Boboli Gardens. Seventy-five Italian artisans completed the magnificent ceiling paintings of the 200-foot-long main lobby and first-floor public rooms, each graced by tapestries and ornate vaulted ceilings. Today, The Breakers is an award-winning luxury oceanfront resort on the National Register of Historic Places. Its Alcazar Lounge, where you can catch a free guided tour at 3 P.M. on Wednesdays, has a case of photos and memorabilia from the hotel's past that are worth studying.

Flagler built his own home next to the Royal Poinciana on the shores of Lake Worth (the Intracoastal Waterway) in 1902. The architectural firm of Carrére & Hastings, who had also worked on the Ponce de León Hotel for Flagler in Saint Augustine, designed the immense fifty-five-room marble mansion, originally called Whitehall. White Doric columns grace the facade of the most ostentatious home on the island. The 71-year-old Flagler, who was thirty-seven years older than his bride, spent $4 million satisfying the opulent tastes of his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan. Her portrait graces the music room, where she's wearing a wedding gift from her husband, a half-million-dollar hip-length strand of pearls. She's noted in the Guinness Book of Records as a woman who in a twelve-year period never wore the same dress twice. You can see some of her gowns displayed in her upstairs dressing rooms.

Whitehall's huge foyer, with seven kinds of rare marble, suggests the atrium of a Roman villa, covered by a baroque ceiling like those of Louis XIV's Versailles. Flagler decorated the guest bedrooms to represent epochs in world history while his own resembled Versailles. He took from the great buildings of Europe an Italian library, a French salon, a Swiss billiard room, a hallway modeled on Saint Peter's in Rome, and a Louis XV ballroom — all overflowing with rich ornamentation.

Now a museum, Whitehall contains not only Flagler furnishings and memorabilia but also collections of porcelain, paintings, silver, and clothing of the period. There's so much to see that you should take one of the continuous forty-five-minute free guided tours from the entrance hall to learn more of the details about Flagler and the house. And don't forget to tour the Rambler, the railcar that Flagler himself used, parked in the rear yard. Built in 1886, its elegant interior, with papered ceiling, inlaid wood, and tulip chandeliers, has been completely restored. Admission $3. (Open Tuesday through Saturday 10 A.M.–5 P.M., Sunday noon–5 P.M., 561-655-2833)

After touring Whitehall, you should take a few hours to explore Palm Beach. A good way to get acquainted with its posh neighborhoods is to pedal out to see them on the bike trail. You can rent a bicycle from the Palm Beach Bicycle Trail Shop at 223 Sunrise Boulevard, and they will direct you to the trail (561-659-4583).

Besides Flagler, the man who most influenced the look of Palm Beach was flamboyant architect Addison Mizner. By the time he was 46, he had established himself as a “society architect,” designing fabulous homes for New York's wealthy and powerful. When his friend Paris Singer, the heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, invited him to Palm Beach in 1918 for a vacation, Mizner headed south in search of new opportunities. His arrival heralded the age of the posh winter residence, for he knew how to design them as status symbols that also took advantage of Florida's climate.

Inspired by the medieval buildings he'd seen around the Mediterranean, Mizner, financed by Singer, built the Everglades Club along Worth Avenue. The Club, the first public building in Florida built in the Mediterranean Revival style, rapidly became the island's most prestigious social address. Singer had thought about building a “convalescent club” for the rich with the winter blahs, staffed with doctors and dance directors. Singer gave Mizner free rein to design living spaces next to patios, cloisters, and loggias, letting the air and sunshine flow through the interiors.

Striving for a medieval, lived-in appearance, Mizner used untrained workman to lay roof tiles crookedly, sprayed condensed milk onto walls to create an impression of centuries-old grime, and fired shotgun pellets into wood to imitate worm holes. After he built a house for Eva Stotesbury, the queen of Palm Beach society, wealthy patrons began checking out of their suites in Flagler's hotels for million-dollar cottages of their own. By the mid-1920s, Mizner had created the Palm Beach Style, designing homes in the old-world style for the newly rich.