Miami is the only major American city founded by a woman, built on subtropical mangroves and driven by an energy that is more Caribbean and Latin American than conventionally North American. The city's identity is a layered thing: Cuban exiles who rebuilt their culture in Little Havana; Haitian art flowing through Wynwood's warehouses; Art Deco architecture preserved in South Beach's candy-coloured pastel blocks; Bahamian Conch architecture surviving in Coconut Grove; and Silicon Beach tech money reshaping Brickell and the Design District. Miami Beach — technically a separate barrier island city — hosts Art Basel each December and arguably the world's most famous stretch of urban beach at Ocean Drive. The Everglades National Park, an hour south-west, is the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles share a habitat; Biscayne Bay's mangrove islands are accessible by kayak; and the Florida Keys extend 200 km south to Key West, Hemingway's adopted home. Miami's food scene is as diverse as its population: Cuban sandwich culture, Haitian griot, Jamaican jerk and Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei fusion all coexist within blocks of each other.
The 1 sq mile district in South Beach holds the world's largest concentration of Art Deco architecture (1920s–40s) — the Art Deco Welcome Center on Ocean Drive offers guided tours of the pastel-painted hotels and streamline moderne facades.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe 8 km stretch from South Pointe to 23rd Street is the world's most photogenic urban beach — white sand, turquoise Atlantic water, and the pastel Deco backdrop that has appeared in every Miami-set film.
Drive or Uber to the heart of Cuban Miami — Domino Park where elderly cubanos play all day, the 8th Street walk of Cuban political murals and Versailles Restaurant for a cortadito and Cuban sandwich.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe warehouse arts district transformed by gallerist Tony Goldman in 2009 — 30+ curated murals by international artists on warehouse walls, surrounded by galleries, restaurants and craft cocktail bars that defined the neighbourhood's transformation.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideMandolin in the Design District serves Aegean mezze in a Biscayne Bay garden setting; KYU in Wynwood does Asian-influenced wood-fired cooking with a cult following — both represent the Miami restaurant scene at its most globally minded.
Yann Kersalé's hanging gardens outside and Herzog & de Meuron's Biscayne Bay terrace frame a collection of 20th and 21st-century international and Latino art — the best museum in Miami and free on the last Fridays.
Zak the Baker in Wynwood is a Miami institution for wood-fired breads, pastries and Jewish-inspired lunch; Coyo Taco does slow-cooked Mexican street tacos from a beautifully designed space with a cocktail bar downstairs.
The 1916 Gilded Age Italian Renaissance villa built by industrialist James Deering on Biscayne Bay — 34 furnished period rooms and 10 acres of formal gardens with a stone barge breakwater have made it Miami's most elegant historic site.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe regenerated financial district south of Downtown has rooftop bars above the Brickell City Centre mall — the Quinto La Huella and Sugar at EAST Hotel provide sweeping Biscayne Bay sunset views.
The "River of Grass" — 1.5 million acres of subtropical wetland — is accessed by flat-bottomed airboats; alligators, snail kites, roseate spoonbills and the uniquely Florida ecosystem are the reward.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuide95% of Biscayne National Park is underwater — mangrove shorelines, seagrass meadows and a shipwreck trail are accessible by NPS glass-bottom boat tours from Dante Fascell Visitor Center.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe planned Mediterranean Revival city within Miami has the Venetian Pool (1923) — a public swimming pool carved from a coral rock quarry with waterfalls and caves — and the Coral Gables Country Club.
Miami's oldest neighbourhood and former Bohemian Quarter has open-air restaurants along the bayfront — ceviche, fried plantains and cold Presidente beer at a terrace table watching sailboats return to the marina.