Beyond the beach, Pensacola rewards exploration. The Seville Square Historic District and Palafox Street make for a good half-day on foot. The National Naval Aviation Museum is free and genuinely impressive — one of the largest aviation museums in the world, with over 150 aircraft spanning a century of naval flight. The Civil War forts along the barrier islands — Fort Pickens and Fort Barrancas — are undervisited and historically significant. Divers should look into the USS Oriskany, an aircraft carrier sunk as an artificial reef and one of the best wreck dives in the Gulf of Mexico.