United States · Florida
Miami
The hemisphere's crossroads: the country's densest Art Deco seafront, Cuban Miami inland, warehouse walls painted end to end, and warm water in January.
Miami is the most Latin American of American cities, a subtropical sprawl where Spanish is spoken as readily as English and the year is split between a warm dry winter and a steaming wet summer. The postcard is South Beach: a pastel run of 1930s Art Deco hotels facing shallow, swimmable Atlantic water. The city that actually feeds and entertains you is on the mainland, in the Cuban counters of Little Havana, painted warehouse blocks and neighbourhoods that each keep their own accent.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-4
Why you'll love Miami
The Deco seafront block after block of streamlined 1930s hotels in sherbet colours, saved from the wrecking ball and best walked at dusk when the neon comes on
Cuban Miami coffee windows on the street, cigars rolled by hand, dominoes slapped down under an awning, and a whole exile culture you can eat and hear your way through
Art out in the open warehouse districts painted wall to wall, serious private collections open to visitors, and a design quarter that behaves like a gallery with valet parking
Warm water in winter shallow, clear Atlantic on one side and a sheltered bay on the other, both swimmable in the months most of the country is frozen
Best time to visit
Nov-Apr
25-29° days
25.774° N, 80.194° W
UTC-4 · America/New York
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Weather & when to go to Miami
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Nov-Apr
Watch for Jun-Nov cyclones & hurricanes risk · Jun, Sep monsoon flooding risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Miami
June and September are the two to dodge: June opens the wet season with a jump in heat and humidity and near-daily afternoon thunderstorms, and September is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season as well as the muggiest month of the year. Nothing about the wet season is dangerous day to day, but September carries the real chance of a trip being rearranged around a storm.
Top things to do in Miami
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Ocean Drive and the Art Deco Historic District - pastel hotels and neon
history culture arts 👍 PopularRoughly a square mile of 1930s streamline moderne, saved from demolition by a preservation campaign in the 1970s and now the densest concentration of the style in the country. Walk Ocean Drive at dusk for the neon, then cut back to Collins and Washington avenues where the same architecture is less varnished and the terrazzo floors are original.
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Wynwood Walls - a warehouse district painted end to end
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA dead garment and warehouse quarter turned into an open-air mural museum, with a walled courtyard of commissioned pieces at its centre and dozens of streets of legal graffiti around it. Breweries, taco counters and galleries have filled the loading bays; the murals get repainted often enough that repeat visitors see a different neighbourhood.
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Calle Ocho and Little Havana - cafecito windows and Domino Park
culture arts food ⭐ Highly recommendedThe spine of Cuban Miami runs along SW 8th Street: ventanitas serving thimbles of sweet coffee to the pavement, cigars hand-rolled in shopfronts, fruit shakes, a restored 1920s cinema and old men playing dominoes all afternoon in Maximo Gomez Park. Come late in the day for the live son and salsa bands.
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South Beach and Lummus Park - the sand the city is famous for
scenic 👍 PopularWide, pale sand backed by palms, candy-striped lifeguard stands and a boardwalk running north. Behind it, Lincoln Road is a pedestrian mall of terrace cafes and Española Way a narrow strip of Mediterranean-revival buildings; the water is shallow, clear and warm enough to swim in midwinter.
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Vizcaya Museum and Gardens - a Gilded Age villa on Biscayne Bay
history scenic 👍 PopularAn industrialist's Italianate winter house built into the mangroves in the 1910s, stuffed with European antiques and fronted by formal gardens, grottoes and a carved stone barge sitting in the bay. It is the single most photographed non-beach thing in the city for good reason.
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Perez Art Museum Miami - hanging gardens over the bay
culture artsA stilted, slatted building by Herzog and de Meuron on the downtown waterfront, with columns of hanging plants on the veranda and a collection weighted towards art of the Americas and the Caribbean. The bayfront terrace and its hammocks are worth the visit on their own.
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Frost Science Museum - a cone-shaped Gulf Stream aquarium
nature wildlifeNext door to the art museum in the same waterfront park, built around a conical aquarium tank you view from above, from the side and finally through the oculus at its base, plus a planetarium and a rooftop level on Florida ecosystems.
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Miami Design District - storefronts as an open-air gallery
shopping culture artsA former furniture quarter rebuilt as a luxury shopping district that reads more like an architecture park: a geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller in the main court, a car park with commissioned facades, sculpture in the alleys and a contemporary art museum with a sculpture garden at the back.
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Coconut Grove - banyan shade, sailing marinas and the oldest streets in the city
scenicMiami's first settled neighbourhood keeps a village pace under enormous banyans, with a bayfront park, a sailing marina, waterside restaurants and an 1890s pioneer home on its own patch of hardwood hammock. Good for an unhurried afternoon when the beach has worn thin.
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Coral Gables and the Venetian Pool - a Mediterranean city built in the 1920s
history scenicA planned City Beautiful suburb of coral rock, tile roofs and banyan boulevards, with a shopping street of low arcades, a landmark 1920s hotel whose tower copies the Giralda in Seville, and a swimming pool quarried out of the coral itself, fed by spring water and ringed with caves and waterfalls.
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Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park - lighthouse, pines and a quiet beach
nature wildlife scenicAt the far tip of Key Biscayne, reached over a causeway with the best skyline view in the city: a long calm beach, Australian pine shade, a restored 1820s brick lighthouse you can climb, and far fewer people than the beach on the barrier island.
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Cuban food and the ventanita - croquetas, cortaditos and ropa vieja
foodEat standing at a street window: ham croquetas, guava pastelitos, a cortadito to wash them down, then a proper sit-down plate of ropa vieja or lechon with black beans, rice and fried plantain. Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Haitian and Peruvian kitchens fill in the rest of the map across the mainland neighbourhoods.
Best areas to stay in Miami
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
South Beach
First-time visitors $$$Deco hotels, sand at the door, late nights
Explore hotels in South Beach →
Brickell
Modern & walkable $$$Glass towers, bay views, polished dining
Explore hotels in Brickell →
Wynwood
Art & nightlife $$Murals, breweries, warehouse bars
Explore hotels in Wynwood →
Coconut Grove
Green & quiet $$Leafy, low-rise, sailing-club calm
Explore hotels in Coconut Grove →
Coral Gables
Elegant & residential $$$Banyan boulevards, tile roofs, unhurried
Explore hotels in Coral Gables →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Miami
Getting to & around Miami
Getting there
Fly into MIA, then roughly 20 min by Metrorail or road into downtown and Brickell, a little longer over a causeway to the beach
Flight
Miami International Airport (MIA)
About 13 km west of downtown. The MIA Mover people-mover runs from the terminals to the Miami Intermodal Center, where the Metrorail Orange Line reaches downtown and Brickell in roughly 15 to 20 min; taxis and rideshare take a similar time when the expressways are clear, and about half an hour across a causeway to South Beach. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International, about 45 km north, is a common alternative, linked south by Brightline and Tri-Rail.
Train
MiamiCentral
The Brightline express runs down the coast from Orlando, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale and Aventura into a downtown terminal that connects to Metromover and Metrorail
Train
Amtrak's Silver Service runs the length of the east coast from New York and Washington to Miami, an overnight-plus journey rather than a quick hop, and Tri-Rail links the airport up the coast through Broward and Palm Beach counties
Coach
Long-distance buses arrive from across Florida and the southeast, with stops near the airport and downtown
Cruise
PortMiami
One of the busiest cruise ports in the world sits on an island opposite downtown, linked by a short bridge, with Caribbean sailings leaving most days of the week
Drive
I-95 comes down the Atlantic coast into downtown and the Florida Turnpike parallels it inland; US-1 continues south through the Keys, and two roads cross the Everglades from the Gulf coast
Getting around
Metromover
A free elevated people-mover looping Downtown, Brickell and the Omni area; the easiest way to cover the bayfront core and worth a ride for the views alone
Free
Metrorail
One elevated line from the airport through downtown and Brickell out to Coral Gables, Dadeland and Hialeah; excellent on its corridor and no help at all off it
TBC
Trolleys
Several cities in the metro run their own free trolley loops, including Miami Beach, Coral Gables and Coconut Grove, useful for short hops within a neighbourhood
Free
Metrobus
Covers what the single rail line misses, including the causeway routes between the mainland and Miami Beach
TBC
Taxi and rideshare
The default way most visitors move between neighbourhoods; the causeways are the bottleneck, and a beach trip in Friday traffic takes far longer than the map suggests
TBC
Car hire
Miami is a driving city and the sights are far apart, but traffic is heavy, drivers are assertive and hotel parking on the beach is scarce
TBC
Bike share
The land is flat as a table and a docked bike-share covers Miami Beach and parts of the mainland; the causeway out to Key Biscayne is the local training ride
TBC
Walking
Each neighbourhood walks well on its own, South Beach and Wynwood especially; the gaps between them do not
Free
Day trips from Miami
Everglades National Park
Full daySawgrass and alligators
A river of grass an inch deep and sixty miles wide. Shark Valley has a paved loop you can ride or take by tram to an observation tower over the sawgrass; the Homestead side has boardwalk trails where alligators and anhingas sit within a few metres of the rail. Airboats operate on the tribal lands just outside the park boundary.
Getting there
car | tour | bus
About 1 hr drive west to the Shark Valley entrance on the Tamiami Trail, or 1.5 hr southwest to the main entrance near Homestead; guided tours run from the city
Key Largo and the Upper Keys
Full dayReef and mangroves
The first island on the Overseas Highway and the closest living coral reef to the city, protected as the first undersea park in the country. Glass-bottom boats, snorkel trips and dives run all day, including out to a submerged bronze statue that has become the signature photograph of the place.
Getting there
car | tour
About 1.5 hr drive south on US-1, or a snorkel tour with hotel pickup
Key West
1-2 daysEnd of the road
The southernmost town in the continental country, reached over a chain of bridges including one that runs seven miles across open water. Conch houses, a rowdy main street, Hemingway's house and its six-toed cats, and a waterfront square that turns out for the sunset every evening. Far better with a night than as a round trip.
Getting there
car | flight | tour
Roughly 3.5 to 4 hr drive down the Overseas Highway, or a short hop by air; long day tours exist but eat the day
Fort Lauderdale
Half dayCanals and beach
A calmer, more residential beach city built around a network of canals that earned it the Venice nickname, with a water taxi that works as sightseeing, a boulevard of restaurants and galleries along the New River, and a beachfront promenade with none of the South Beach crush.
Getting there
car | train
About 45 min drive north, or roughly half an hour by Brightline
Biscayne National Park
Half dayUnderwater park
A national park that is almost entirely water: mangrove shoreline, the northernmost Florida Keys and a trail of shipwrecks on the reef. Very little of it can be seen from land, so plan on a boat, snorkel or paddle trip rather than a drive-through.
Getting there
car | ferry | tour
About 1 hr drive south to the visitor centre near Homestead, then boat trips from the dock
Palm Beach and West Palm Beach
Full dayGilded coast
The old-money end of the coast: a short avenue of couture storefronts and courtyards, oceanfront mansions behind hedges, and the railway baron's marble house on the lagoon, kept as a museum of the era that built the whole of Florida's east coast.
Getting there
car | train
About 1.5 hr drive north, or roughly 1 hr 15 by Brightline
A little history of Miami
Tequesta people lived at the mouth of the Miami River for perhaps two thousand years before Spain claimed Florida, and the place stayed a scattering of homesteads and a coconut plantation well into the 1890s. The city exists because Julia Tuttle, who owned land on the north bank of the river, persuaded the railway magnate Henry Flagler to extend his line south; Miami incorporated in 1896 with a few hundred voters, making it the rare major American city founded on a woman's initiative. Dredges did the rest: the mangrove sandbar across the bay was pumped into Miami Beach, a land boom drew speculators from across the country, and the boom died in the 1926 hurricane and the Depression that followed, but not before the beachfront had filled with the Art Deco hotels the district still trades on.
The postwar decades made it a resort, and 1959 remade it entirely. The Cuban Revolution sent wave after wave of exiles to Miami, first the professional classes and later the Mariel boatlift, and Little Havana and Hialeah became the centre of an exile politics that still shapes the city. A cocaine-soaked and violent stretch in the late 1970s and 1980s gave Miami its television-noir reputation; in the same years a preservation campaign saved the Deco district from the bulldozers, and the restored pastel seafront turned the city into a fashion and nightlife capital in the 1990s. Later arrivals from Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Brazil, along with an international art fair that chose Miami Beach for its American edition, left the hemispheric crossroads the city is today.
Miami incorporates after Julia Tuttle persuades Henry Flagler to bring his railway south
Miami Beach incorporates as its own city on a dredged and filled barrier island
The Great Miami Hurricane ends the land boom and wrecks much of the young city
The seafront rebuilds in the streamlined Art Deco style that now defines it
The Cuban Revolution begins decades of exile migration that remake the city's language and politics
The Miami Beach Architectural District is listed on the National Register, among the first twentieth-century districts to be protected
The Mariel boatlift brings roughly 125,000 Cubans to South Florida in a matter of months
Art Basel opens its American edition in Miami Beach, pulling galleries and collectors to the city
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / B
120 V, 60 Hz
Dialing
+1
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Monsoon flooding risk in this window; check current conditions before you go.
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Miami
▸ When is the best time to visit Miami?
November to April, the dry season. Warm days, low humidity, calm afternoons and water that stays swimmable, with January to April the most reliable stretch of all. From May the heat and humidity climb and the afternoon storms start, and they stay through October.
▸ Which months should I avoid in Miami?
June and September. June opens the wet season with a sharp jump in humidity and near-daily afternoon thunderstorms, and September sits at the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season while also being the muggiest month of the year. Storms rarely spoil a whole trip, but September carries the highest chance of one being rearranged.
▸ How many days do you need in Miami?
Three full days covers the beach, the Art Deco seafront, Little Havana and Wynwood at a reasonable pace. Five gives you room for the Everglades or a run down to the Keys, plus a slower day in Coconut Grove or Coral Gables.
▸ Do I need a car in Miami?
Usually yes. The neighbourhoods sit far apart and the rail network only serves one corridor well, so most visitors either hire a car or lean on rideshare. The exception is a trip spent entirely on South Beach, where walking, the free trolley and a bike cover everything and parking is a headache you can skip.
▸ Is Miami expensive?
It sits at the pricier end of American cities, and the beachfront in the winter high season is the steepest part of it. It scales down sharply inland, though: Cuban counter food and Latin bakeries feed you well for very little, the Metromover and trolleys cost nothing, and the same hotels are a different proposition outside the dry season.
▸ Do I need Spanish in Miami?
No, but you will hear it constantly. Spanish is the first language across large parts of the city and you may well be greeted in it in Little Havana or Hialeah; a reply in English is met without a blink almost everywhere, and a handful of polite phrases goes a long way.
▸ Should I stay in Miami Beach or on the mainland?
Miami Beach if you want to step out of the hotel onto sand and walk the Deco strip after dark. The mainland, meaning Brickell, Wynwood or the Grove, if you are here for the food, art and neighbourhood life and are happy to cross a causeway when you want the beach.
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