Visit Miami

The historic district holds about 800 Art Deco buildings from the 1920s to the 1940s, clustered around Ocean Drive, Collins Avenue and Espanola Way. A 90-minute guided walk leaves the Art Deco Welcome Center at 10:30am; otherwise an audio guide is rented on site. The afternoon goes to the beach, wide and patrolled, with its colourful lifeguard huts. At night Ocean Drive glows with neon, but the better tables are on the pedestrian Lincoln Road.

Fifteen minutes north of South Beach, the former warehouse district of Wynwood is covered in monumental murals. The Wynwood Walls, the paid core of the setup, are booked online; the surrounding streets are walked freely, between galleries, breweries and shops. Right next door, the Design District blends contemporary architecture, public art and luxury brands. Allow half a day for both, avoiding the harsh midday sun.

On Calle Ocho, Southwest 8th Street, Little Havana keeps an intense Cuban life: Maximo Gomez Park, where elderly domino players gather every day from mid-morning, the hand-rolled cigar workshops you can watch from the street, and the ventanitas serving a strong sweet coffee at the counter. On the last Friday of each month, Viernes Culturales opens the galleries and closes the street to traffic. Allow two to three hours, extended by a live salsa set at Ball & Chain in the evening.

To the south, these two older districts contrast with the glitz of the beach. In Coconut Grove, the Vizcaya villa and its Italian gardens run down toward the bay; it closes on Tuesdays. In Coral Gables, a planned city of the 1920s, the Venetian Pool is a public pool cut from a former coral quarry, and the Biltmore hotel raises a tower modelled on Seville. Half a day by car.

The business centre is visited mainly for its waterfront museums: the Perez Art Museum and the Frost science museum, with a planetarium and a three-level aquarium, side by side at Museum Park. The free Metromover monorail loops around them in about fifteen minutes. In Brickell, residential towers and rooftop bars overlook the Miami River, crossed by drawbridges. Bayside Marketplace, more touristy, is the departure point for the hour-long bay cruises past the islands of the wealthy.

To the west, the Everglades national park begins an hour's drive away: an airboat ride, the raised Anhinga Trail boardwalk, the Shark Valley observation tower by bike. To the south, the Overseas Highway runs toward the Keys: Key Largo and its John Pennekamp underwater park are 1h15 away, Key West 3h30, too far for a simple day trip. As in New York, a car changes everything here.