Nineteenth-century wealth, elegance and surely some eccentricity spill out around the corner and up the street in Florida’s oldest city, St. Augustine. Four handsome neighboring buildings filled with remarkable objects and furnishings tell tales of quite a lifestyle.

One of them re-opened Feb. 15 for the first time since 2000, and in far greater splendor than visitors have seen for years. Careful loving historic preservation led by a granddaughter of the owner and her husband can do that.

Stroll another block to find two churches tied to the builders of these opulent 19th-century homes and hotels if you can tear away.

I couldn’t. Missed the churches because the wonders are immense and the days not long enough to enjoy everything in Villa Zorayda, the Lightner Museum, Flagler College and Casa Monica Hotel, all within sight of one another.

Those are today’s names. Expect to be confused because the Lightner is often referred to as the Alcazar Hotel, which it was until Otto C. Lightner turned it into a museum of hobbies. He had plenty of those.

Flagler College started life in 1887 as the Hotel Ponce de Leon and the Casa Monica Hotel opened its doors to three guests Jan. 1, 1888.

Don’t relax yet, however, because Henry Flagler changed its name to the Cordova when he bought it all three months later: “fixtures, furnishings, silver, hardware, linen, bedding, parlor, hall, dining room and kitchen furnishings and all other chattels” for $325,000.

Casa Monica didn’t return as the name until 1999 when a massive renovation by the Kessler Collection re-created the hotel’s Spanish Moorish design, Victorian velvet and tapestry and medieval European castle design. Now it’s a AAA Four Diamond property.

Stay at the Casa Monica with these other grand buildings in sight through your windows, leave the car parked and cross the street to unlimited treasures. Restaurants, little shops and galleries are handy too, in the hotel and on the street.

Spain is evident all over St. Augustine thanks to the 1565 discoverers, but it’s not limited to forts, cemeteries and stories of Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth.

Luxurious is the style here and it’s easy to wrap up in the splendor, transporting yourself to another era. Mustn’t touch exquisite museum pieces, but you can relax in splendid lobbies and dining rooms, gaze across massive ballrooms, stroll the grassy grounds, sit under Louis Comfort Tiffany brass and gold chandeliers and across from dozens of Tiffany windows. Reason enough to visit.

Flagler College tour guides say the world’s largest collection of Tiffany stained glass is right here, installed in the early years of his career.

Windows matter across the street too at Villa Zorayda. Forty of them to be exact. Give full reign to your imagination when you look at the front of this building, one-tenth of the scale of a portion of Spain’s Alhambra. Many of those 40 windows jut out of the coquina cement structure at all sorts of angles.

Original owner and builder Franklin W. Smith, who founded the YMCA, and his wife Laura Bevan loved the Alhambra and recreated this version in 1883 for wintering in a warm climate.

If you’ve read, and remembered, Washington Irving’s “The Alhambra,” you’ll already know that Zorayda is one of the three princesses.