PART INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS CENTER, PART CULTURAL AREA.
Downtown Miami is Miami’s bustling epicenter, packed with gleaming skyscrapers, sweeping bay views, and hidden places to explore. It’s a neighborhood of layers—decades of history overlapping and colliding; tourism destinations like Port of Miami alongside local favorites like American Airlines Arena, home to the Miami Heat; century-old buildings among new pockets of young residents who call the neighborhood home.
Where its southern neighbor Brickell is modern, towering, and dense, Downtown Miami is a mix of the old and the new. It was the site of one of Miami’s earliest international attractions, Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel, which opened in 1897 along the bank of the Miami River. Downtown Miami was home to Miami’s first development boom in the 1910s and 1920s, with Flagler Street at its core. Freedom Tower, listed here in our itinerary, was the entry point for Cuban refugees arriving in Miami in 1959.
Today, Downtown Miami’s population has doubled in fewer than 10 years, and those new residents have brought new restaurants, bars, shops, parks, and world-class museums.