Mel Fisher Maritime Museum

Mel Fisher Maritime Museum is a shipwreck archaeology and history museum in Old Town Key West, focused on maritime life around Florida and the Caribbean. It's at 200 Greene Street, and it suits visitors who want the stories behind the recovered objects as well as the treasure itself. Give the displays time: they work as a self-guided visit, and visitors who read through them report spending an hour or longer. A separate conservation-lab tour is the add-on for seeing how artifacts are treated after recovery.

The museum's 1622 exhibits follow Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita, lost when a hurricane struck a Spanish fleet in the Florida Straits. One remarkable Atocha find is a 77.76-carat uncut emerald from Colombia. Mel Fisher's team began searching in 1969 and found the Atocha's main cargo pile in 1985; the gold, silver and jewelry on display put a long salvage effort in front of you.

The museum occupies the former Key West Naval Storehouse, a Neoclassical building completed in 1910 for Navy supplies and accounts. Its steel frame was built to carry heavy loads, and it still supports heavy artifacts and water tanks used to hold finds during conservation. The building's old job fits the collection: it was made to store valuable things, and now it houses objects brought up from the sea.

The Henrietta Marie exhibit turns to the transatlantic slave trade. The English ship sank at New Ground Reef in 1700, about 35 miles west of Key West. Shortly before the wreck, it had sold 191 enslaved Africans in Jamaica; no one aboard survived the sinking. This is difficult history, and it gives the museum a serious counterweight to the treasure story.

The conservation-lab tour is separate from museum admission and offers a closer look at treating recovered artifacts. Choose it if the work behind preservation interests you; the museum offers lab tours at set times, so check its current schedule before planning around one.