No history, no problem. That’s always been the approach to the past in the Magic City. Just 20 years after the founding of the city in 1893, International Harvester vice president James Deering dreamed up a bayside palace that would look like it had been built in the days of Ponce de Leon. That’s why, as a new documentary on Vizcaya shows, he named his estate after one of Ponce de Leon’s fellow explorers, Sebastian Vizcaino.

“Vizcaya had not to wait for the passage of centuries to invest her with memories and legends,” designer Paul Chafin observed. That was his job. Among many other juicy tidbits, we learn that the “impresario” who helped Deering realize his dream had a penchant for dressing up as a gaucho. Indeed, it was Chafin’s vivid imagination that made Vizcaya such an impressive fake. Maybe it’s even thanks to him that Miamians still have a habit of baroque self-invention.

Produced by Linda Corley, the doc is narrated by “part-time Miami resident” Andy Garcia. The actor’s lingering Cuban accent as he speaks Deering’s words is further proof of our history as constant reinvention. Here is the Midwestern magnate as Cuban immigrant, presiding over the construction of his faux Italian villa by Bahamaian laborers, an openly gay “impresario,” and a Colombian landscape architect.

Is it any wonder the place is still breathtaking, after all these years?

Vizcaya airs at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 20 on WPBT, Channel 2. The video also can be purchased at www.vizcayamuseumshop.com.