South Beach Attractions

Three of the four things people remember about South Beach are open air and free.

Lummus Park exists because of a decision made in the mid-1910s, when the city bought the oceanfront strip from the Lummus brothers rather than letting it be built on. That purchase is why there is a park and not a wall of hotels between Ocean Drive and the sand, and it is the reason every deco façade on the street has an unobstructed view of the Atlantic. Roughly ten blocks long, palms, volleyball courts, a paved path, and the beach concessions at the eastern edge.

The lifeguard stands are the island's other piece of accidental public art. Each is individually designed and painted, each stands at the end of a numbered street and takes its name from it, and the set runs from South Pointe north. The 1990s generation came from William Lane after Hurricane Andrew; a later commission replaced and extended the line.

The sand is a wide, engineered, entirely public beach with access at the end of every numbered street. Renourishment since the 1970s is why it is as wide as it is.

The fourth thing, Ocean Drive itself, is a ten-block architectural set piece pretending to be a restaurant row. Treat it as the former.

You will walk past forty deco façades. These four are the ones with a story attached, and all four are visible from the public pavement.

The Colony, 736 Ocean Drive, 1935, by Henry Hohauser. The blue vertical neon sign is the single most photographed object on the island, and the symmetry below it, central bay, flanking wings, stepped crown, is the district's standard grammar at its cleanest.

The Breakwater, 940 Ocean Drive, 1936, by Anton Skislewicz. The stepped tower with the name running down it in neon is Nautical Moderne doing what the style was for: making a three-storey building read as a ship from across the street.

Casa Casuarina, 1116 Ocean Drive, built in 1930 as the Amsterdam Palace and the one Mediterranean-revival intrusion in the deco run. Gianni Versace bought it in 1992 and was shot on its front steps in 1997. It now trades as a hotel and restaurant, so the courtyard is reachable if you book a table and not otherwise. People photograph the steps. Be aware of what happened on them.

The Carlyle, 1250 Ocean Drive, 1939, by Kiehnel and Elliott. Three vertical fins, a long horizontal front, and the most cinematic frontage on the street, which is why it plays the club exterior in The Birdcage.

The Art Deco Welcome Center at 1001 Ocean Drive, in the old Beach Patrol building, is the place to start if you want the full version rather than four highlights.

The Wolfsonian-FIU, 1001 Washington Avenue. A 1927 storage warehouse holding a collection of design, propaganda and material culture from roughly 1850 to 1950: furniture, posters, architectural fragments, industrial objects. It explains the district outside better than any tour does. Modest adult admission, and it has historically run a free evening each week; check the current schedule. Ninety minutes minimum.

The Bass, 2100 Collins Avenue. Contemporary art in a 1930 building by Russell Pancoast, built as the city's first public library and art centre, standing in Collins Park a block from the sand. The museum itself dates from 1964. An hour, less if the show is small.

The Holocaust Memorial, 1933–1945 Meridian Avenue, at Dade Boulevard. Kenneth Treister's design opened in February 1990: a colonnade, a reflecting pool, a tunnel of names and the enormous bronze arm reaching out of the ground with an Auschwitz number on it. Free, open daily from mid-morning to sunset. Give it forty minutes and do not treat it as a photo stop.

The Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Drive. A small, densely planted urban garden opposite the Convention Center, free to enter with donations invited, closed on at least one weekday. Twenty-five minutes, and the most reliably shaded ground on the island.

The New World Center, 500 17th Street. Frank Gehry's 2011 hall for the New World Symphony. Concerts are ticketed; the WALLCAST performances projected onto the 7,000 square foot exterior wall facing SoundScape Park are free and need no ticket.

South Pointe Park occupies the southern tip, where the island stops and Government Cut begins. There is a pier, a playground and splash area, a long serpentine path and a lawn. The reason to be there is the shipping channel: the cruise ships leaving PortMiami pass within a couple of hundred metres of the pier, mostly on weekend afternoons, and container traffic runs through all week. It is the best free spectacle in South Beach and almost nobody plans for it.

Flamingo Park, in the residential grid around 11th and 12th Streets between Jefferson and Michigan, is where the island exercises: a public swimming pool, a tennis centre, a running track, a baseball stadium and a playground. Visitors rarely go. Families staying more than three days should.

Maurice Gibb Memorial Park sits on the bay at 18th Street and Purdy Avenue in Sunset Harbour: a small waterfront green with a playground, a dog run and a kayak launch. It faces due west, which makes it the most convenient sunset on the island.

The Miami Beach Boardwalk is two different things with one name. South of about 21st Street it is a paved beachfront path running through the dune planting down towards South Pointe. North of 21st it becomes the raised wooden boardwalk that most people picture. Either way it runs for miles, it is flat, it is free, and at 7am it is the best thing on the island.