traveldk.com

Designed by the celebrated American architect Philip Johnson in 1982, the Mediterranean-style complex, set around a tiled plaza, incorporates the Miami Art Museum; the Historical Museum of Southern Florida); and the Main Public Library, which contains four million books.

Downtown’s landmark was built in 1925 in the Mediterranean-Revival style, inspired by the Giralda, an 800-year-old bell tower in Seville, Spain. Initially home to the now-defunct Miami Daily News , its role and name changed in the 1960s, when it became the reception center to process more than 500,000 Cubans fleeing Castro. It was restored in 1988 to create a Cuban museum, which is located in the lobby of the building.

This imposing Neo-Classical edifice, finished in 1931, has hosted a number of high-profile trials, including that of Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian president, in 1990. The spartan jail cell where he awaited trial on international drug-trafficking charges is also in this building. The main attraction is the secondfloor mural entitled Law Guides Florida’s Progress , designed by Denman Fink, famous for his work in Coral Gables. It depicts Florida’s evolution from a tropical backwater to one of America’s most prosperous states.

Curving around Miamarina, this shopping and entertainment complex is undeniably fun and the Downtown area’s best attraction. It’s not South Beach, but La Vida Loca echoes here, too, often with live salsa bands playing on the esplanade. Shops – including Guess?, Victoria’s Secret, Structure, and Foot Locker – and 30 eateries, with everything from ice cream to paella, make it a happening place. To the south, Bayfront Park, designed by Isamu Noguchi, is extensive and can provide a pleasant interlude of greenery, water, monuments, sculpture, and striking views.

The city’s most striking skyscraper is the work of architect I. M. Pei, perhaps most famous for putting the glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre in Paris. This building is notable both during the day for its Op-Art horizontal banding across the stepped hemi-cylinders, and at night for the changing, sophisticated colors of its overall illumination. Built in 1983, the office building was known first as Centrust Tower, but it now bears the moniker of its current principal tenant.

Built in 1926, this theater has a fabulously ornate Moorish interior and is housed in the similarly colorful and festooned Olympia Building. It began as a vaudeville theater, where Rudy Vallee used to perform, and Elvis Presley also gigged here. Inside, the hall looks like an Arabian Nights palace, with turrets, towers, intricate columns, and a crescent moon and stars in the ceiling. Buy a ticket to anything just to see it.

Flagler is Downtown Miami’s main drag – loud, bright, busy, and lined with small shops and street peddlers. Pop into the Galería International Mall (243 East Flagler Street, at SE 2nd Avenue) for cheap and tasty ethnic snacks, while on the next block is the stylish Gusman Center. On East Flagler Street at NE 2nd Avenue, look for the Alfred I. DuPont Building (1937–9), a paean to Art Deco in the Depression Moderne style.

This Mediterranean-Revival building in the Spanish Colonial style (built 1922) is the oldest Catholic church in Miami. Dozens of masses are held every week, in English and Spanish. The church is noted for its stained-glass windows, which were made in Munich, Germany. The ceiling mural was restored in its entirety by a lone Nicaraguan refugee in the late 1980s.

Mosaic on dome of Gesu Church

Completed in 1926, this is a kind of Neo-Renaissance work: the building’s twelve stories are clad in Indiana limestone and its roof sheathed in Spanish tiles. The interior is opulent, featuring a lavish ceiling decorated in gold leaf, with the building’s insignia cast in brass. The lobby’s light fixtures, the mailbox, and the office directory are all original. Picked out in gold on the elevator are scenes of South Florida wildlife.

A slice of Cuban culture, liberally spiced up with all sorts of other Hispanic and Caribbean influences. Since Castro’s Communist revolution in Cuba, Miami has become ever more Cubanized by wave after wave of immigrants from the embattled island they still long for as home (see Calle Ocho, Little Havana).