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The house where the Merrick family lived in the late 1800s and where George Merrick, Coral Gables’ master builder, grew up. The contrast between the modest surroundings of his home and the spectacle of his grandiose dreams is fascinating (see Merrick’s Coral Gables Fantasies).

The repatriation of a Cuban boy at gunpoint by the US Justice Dept hit the world’s media in 2000 and tore the Cuban community here apart.

Built in 1966 on the edge of Biscayne Bay, this peculiar conical church draws in Miami’s Cuban exiles. The altar is oriented toward Cuba, rather than to the east, and above it is a mural depicting the history of the Catholic Church in Cuba. The shrine is dedicated to the Virgin of Charity, the Cuban patron saint.

In 2001, Cubana singer Gloria Estefan was rocked by a claim that her husband, Emilio, had sexually harassed another man.

The imaginative mind behind the development of Coral Gables (see Merrick’s Coral Gables Fantasies).

Elected in 1905, he enacted Florida’s first conservation laws and also a program for draining the Everglades.

The legal mastermind (1830–1913) who opened up Florida through railroads and luxury construction.

Miami has one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors in the world, so this stunning monument has extra poignancy. Sculpted by Kenneth Treister and finished in 1990, the centerpiece is an enormous bronze forearm bearing a stamped number from Auschwitz. The arm is thronged with nearly 100 life-sized figures in attitudes of suffering. The surrounding plaza has a graphic pictorial history of the Holocaust, and a granite wall listing the names of thousands of concentration camp victims.

The dynamic pioneer who convinced Henry Flagler to extend his railroad down to Miami, in 1896.