Things to do
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Little Havana
Calle Ocho carries the Cuban exile city that formed here from the nineteen sixties: windows serving coffee in thimble cups, cigar rollers working in shopfronts, and a park where older men play dominoes behind a fence by long tradition. Galleries and a restored cinema hold the central block. A cultural Friday each month closes the street. Mornings are quiet and the coffee is the point.
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Miami Beach Art Deco Historic District
Some eight hundred buildings from the nineteen twenties to the forties fill the blocks between Ocean Drive and Washington Avenue: porthole windows, eyebrow ledges, terrazzo floors and neon. Campaigners saved them from demolition in the nineteen seventies, and the pastel paint came later as a designer's idea. Guided walks leave from the welcome centre on Ocean Drive. Evening, with the neon lit and the terraces full, shows them properly.
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South Beach
Sand runs wide and pale for several kilometres behind a line of painted lifeguard towers, each one different, which are the photograph most visitors carry home. Lummus Park separates the beach from Ocean Drive and its hotel terraces. The water is warm and stays shallow a long way out. South Pointe at the bottom end is calmer, with a pier and cruise ships passing close.
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Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Deering built an Italian villa on the bay in nineteen sixteen and filled it with European rooms bought whole and reassembled. A carved stone barge sits offshore as a breakwater. Formal gardens step down towards the water in coral stone and clipped hedge, and they are the part that repays the heat. Timed tickets are sold in advance, and the light is kindest early.
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Wynwood Walls
An old warehouse block was turned into an outdoor gallery of commissioned murals, and the district around it followed: painted shutters street after street, breweries, galleries and design shops in former garment factories. The walled courtyards are ticketed and curated, while the surrounding streets are open and change constantly. Midday sun is hard on the colours. Parking around Wynwood is scarce, so arrive by ride service.