A guide to Worth Avenue.

Worth Avenue runs four blocks across the island of Palm Beach, from the Intracoastal at one end to the Atlantic at the other. It is the most photographed street in the county and, for a street with that reputation, a surprisingly quiet one to actually walk.

Start at the ocean end

The clock tower stands at the eastern end, where the avenue meets the sea. It is the landmark everyone knows and the natural place to begin, partly because it means you walk west with the morning sun behind you rather than in your eyes.

Go early. Before ten the light is low along the storefronts, the pavement is empty enough to photograph, and the heat has not yet arrived. By midday in summer the avenue is bright, exposed, and considerably less charming.

The vias are the point

Most visitors walk the length of the avenue, look at the windows, and leave having missed the best of it. The real character is in the vias — narrow pedestrian courtyards leading off the main street into interior gardens, fountains, and staircases that go up to nothing in particular.

They are the work of Addison Mizner, the architect who shaped much of Palm Beach in the 1920s and gave the island its Mediterranean vocabulary of stucco, arches, and terracotta. Via Mizner is the one that carries his name. There are several others, and they are easy to walk past — the entrances are deliberately understated, often little more than a gap between two shopfronts.

Step into them. They are open to the public, they are almost always cooler and quieter than the street, and they are where the avenue stops performing and starts being a place.

How to spend a morning

• Park once and walk. The avenue is four blocks and moving a car is more trouble than it saves.
• Work west from the clock tower, then come back along the opposite pavement — the two sides are genuinely different.
• Detour into every via you pass, even the ones that look private. They are not.
• Sit down somewhere with a courtyard table rather than a street-facing one.
• Be finished by noon. The afternoon belongs to the water.

What to wear

Palm Beach is more relaxed than its reputation suggests, but it is not a beach town in the way the rest of the coast is. Covered up and understated reads correctly here. A collared shirt or a clean tee, something other than swim shorts, and shoes you can walk four blocks in twice.

The avenue rewards a slower pass than most people give it. The shopfronts are the advertisement. The courtyards behind them are the reason to come.