Explore Miami Beach

The Bass is a contemporary art museum in Collins Park, Miami Beach, founded in 1963 on the collection John and Johanna Bass left to the city and opened in 1964. It occupies the former Miami Beach Public Library, a 1930 Art Deco building by Russell Pancoast later extended by Arata Isozaki, and shows changing exhibitions of contemporary art.

The Jewish Museum of Florida covers Jewish life in Florida since 1763. It occupies two restored former synagogues on Washington Avenue in South Beach: the 1936 building at number 301, with Art Deco details, a copper dome and 80 stained-glass windows, and next door the first synagogue of Miami Beach. Its core exhibition is MOSAIC: Jewish Life in Florida.

Jungle Island is an animal park on Watson Island in Biscayne Bay, between downtown Miami and Miami Beach. It opened in 1936 as Parrot Jungle in what is now Pinecrest, moved here in 2003 and took its present name in 2007. Visitors walk through aviaries, a treewalk village and an Everglades habitat, watch an animal show and can book animal encounters and ziplines.

The Freedom Tower is a 1925 Mediterranean Revival skyscraper on Biscayne Boulevard, designed by Schultze and Weaver for the Miami News. From 1962 to 1974 it housed the Cuban Refugee Center, which received Cubans arriving after the revolution. Now part of Miami Dade College, it holds exhibitions on its history and on Cuban exile.

Bayfront Park is a 13-hectare public park on Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami, redesigned from the 1980s to plans by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It has lawns and palm-lined paths, the Mildred and Claude Pepper Fountain, Noguchi's memorial to the Challenger astronauts and an open-air amphitheatre used for concerts and festivals.

The Museum of Ice Cream in Miami is a self-guided interactive exhibition at Miami Worldcenter in downtown Miami, one branch of a chain with sites in several US cities and Singapore. Its themed rooms include a diner, a rainbow tunnel, a carnival, a sensory lab and the Sprinkle Pool, a pool filled with plastic sprinkles, with ice cream served along the way.

The Museum of Miami, called HistoryMiami until its 2026 renaming, is a history museum in the Miami-Dade Cultural Center on West Flagler Street in downtown Miami. Founded in 1940 and affiliated with the Smithsonian, it covers the people and events that shaped South Florida in permanent galleries and changing exhibitions, alongside archives and a folklife centre.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens is the former winter estate of industrialist James Deering on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove, Miami. The villa, completed in 1916 in an Italian Renaissance-inspired Mediterranean Revival style, keeps its furnished rooms and is surrounded by formal gardens, native woodland and the historic Vizcaya Village.

The Coral Gables Museum occupies the former Coral Gables Police and Fire Station, a stone building designed by Phineas Paist and completed in 1939 as a Works Progress Administration project. Opened as a museum in 2011, it presents exhibitions on architecture, urban design and the history of Coral Gables.