Free Things to Do in South Beach

The sand is free, public and lifeguarded for the whole length of the island, with access at the end of every numbered street off Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue. There is no private beach in Florida above the high-water mark and there is none here. What costs money is a lounger and an umbrella. Bring a towel and it costs nothing.

Lummus Park, the ten-block strip of palms and paved path between Ocean Drive and the sand, exists because the city bought the oceanfront from the Lummus brothers in the mid-1910s rather than letting it be developed. That decision is why the deco row has a view.

The free game: photograph every lifeguard stand. Each one is individually designed and painted, each stands at a numbered street end and takes that street's name, and the set runs from South Pointe north past the district. Walking from 1st Street to 23rd collecting them is a genuine two-hour activity, it gives a walk a purpose, and it is what a lot of residents' visiting friends end up doing.

The beachwalk runs behind the dune planting as a paved path south of about 21st Street and becomes the raised wooden boardwalk north of it. Flat, free, separated from traffic, and open when the sand itself is closed at night.

Times to know. The beach is closed 10pm to 5am by city code. Sunrise runs from around 6:30am in June to about 7:10am in December, and the forty minutes before it are the best free hour in South Beach.

The Holocaust Memorial, 1933–1945 Meridian Avenue at Dade Boulevard. Kenneth Treister's design opened in February 1990. Free, open daily from mid-morning until sunset. A colonnade, a reflecting pool, a tunnel of names and an enormous bronze arm rising from the ground with an Auschwitz number on it. Allow forty minutes and treat it as the serious thing it is.

The Miami Beach Botanical Garden, 2000 Convention Center Drive. Free to enter with donations invited, closed at least one weekday. Small, densely planted, and the most reliably shaded ground on the island, which makes it the free answer to the middle of the afternoon.

SoundScape Park and the New World Center, 500 17th Street. Frank Gehry's 2011 building uses its own 7,000 square foot exterior wall as a projection screen. The WALLCAST concerts are free and need no ticket, and the city has long run an outdoor film series on the lawn on weekday evenings through the cooler months. Bring a blanket. This is the best free evening in Miami Beach and it is not close.

Museum free windows. The Wolfsonian has historically offered a free evening each week, and the Bass has run free or reduced days. Both schedules change, so check the current one rather than turning up hopefully.

Hotel lobbies along Ocean Drive and Collins are public-facing rooms, many with original terrazzo, etched glass and light fittings. Walk in quietly, look, and buy a coffee if you stay.

South Pointe Park is the best free attraction on this island that is not a building. It occupies the southern tip where the land stops and Government Cut begins, with a pier, a playground, a splash area and a long lawn. The reason to go is the shipping: cruise ships leaving PortMiami pass a couple of hundred metres from the pier, mostly on weekend afternoons, and commercial traffic runs through all week. Nobody sells tickets to it.

Flamingo Park, inland around 11th and 12th Streets between Jefferson and Michigan, has a running track, tennis courts, a baseball stadium, a playground and a public pool. The grounds are free; the pool charges non-residents.

Maurice Gibb Memorial Park, 18th Street at Purdy Avenue on the bay, is small, free, faces due west and is the most convenient sunset on the island.

The Venetian Causeway, from the north end of the island, is a chain of low residential islands with a footway, light traffic and water on both sides. Walk out as far as the first island and back at the end of the afternoon. It costs nothing on foot and it is the best hour most visitors never have.

Lincoln Road is free to walk and worth it for the Morris Lapidus design underneath the retail: the follies, the planting beds and the paving all date from the 1960 pedestrianisation.