The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg grabbed the No. 5 spot among America’s best art museums in the 2026 USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. This waterfront institution holds the world’s largest collection of Salvador Dalí’s works outside Spain.
Museum staff say the ranking proves they’ve transformed what visitors expect. Gone are the days of simply staring at paintings on walls. Now, the building blends old masterworks with new tech that pulls people into the art itself.
You’ll find the Dalí Museum at 1 Dali Blvd. Doors open at 10 a.m. and close at 6 p.m. most days. Thursdays? They stay open until 8 p.m.
The Dalí Dome launched in August 2023. Walk inside, and you’re surrounded — walls, floor, ceiling — by a 360-degree canvas of moving images.
Queen Heaven just started playing there. For 77 minutes, Queen’s music fills the space while archival clips and remastered videos wrap around you. It’s the only 360-degree dome show in Florida.
The museum owns more Dalí pieces than anywhere except Spain. But curators decided years ago that hanging paintings wasn’t enough. They wanted to shake things up, push boundaries, and make people feel something different.
According to I Love the Burg, this USA Today recognition confirms St. Petersburg’s rise as an arts hub. Readers voted, which means thousands of people across the country looked at a list of museums and collectively agreed, “Yes, the one with the melting clocks energy belongs near the top,” reinforcing that this Florida spot now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the nation’s top museums.
The dome matches the wild spirit of Dalí’s surrealism. Inside, reality warps and twists. Expectations crumble. That’s exactly what the artist wanted when he picked up a brush decades ago.