Fort East Martello Museum

Fort East Martello is a red-brick coastal fort turned museum on South Roosevelt Boulevard, near Key West International Airport. Its collection mixes the fort itself with Key West history, folk art and the famously strange Robert the Doll. Keep it on your list if that blend sounds fun; the fort was never armed or fought in a battle, so this is more local history and oddball art than a conventional military museum.

The museum is arranged around a central courtyard and brick citadel. Give yourself time to look through the rooms, not just the Robert display: exhibits cover the island's wrecking and cigar-making past, and the collection also includes Cuban folk artist Mario Sanchez and Stanley Papio's metal sculptures. Visitor reactions to the artwork are mixed, which is part of the gamble if you prefer a traditional history museum.

The citadel's rooftop observation platform is the other payoff, with wide Atlantic views toward Smathers Beach. Reaching it means climbing the tower's stairs. The operator describes the rest of the property as accessible, but excludes the citadel, so the roof and upper fort are not the accessible part of the visit.

Robert is a handmade, 40-inch doll from around the turn of the 20th century, dressed in a sailor suit and stuffed with excelsior, or wood wool. He belonged to Key West artist Robert Eugene Otto; Myrtle Reuter donated him to the museum in 1994. The stories of a haunting are local legend, not established history, but Robert has become the museum's signature character.

Papio moved to Key Largo in 1949 and made satirical sculptures from discarded appliances and car parts. His homemade outdoor museum charged a quarter, and his clashes with neighbors and officials over zoning led to six jail terms. The museum's permanent exhibit gives his welded figures a vivid Key West backstory; the rough, junk-built style is unusual and doesn't land with every visitor.

The East and West Martello towers were part of a larger plan to defend Key West's harbor alongside Fort Zachary Taylor. The nine-fort scheme drawn up in 1836 was cut back because of its cost, leaving the two Martello batteries as outlying defenses. They were never armed and never fought. Key West stayed under Union control during the Civil War even though most local residents supported the Confederacy.

The Key West Art & Historical Society restored the East Tower and opened the museum in 1950. The fort was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.