
Celia Cruz, the Havana-born Queen of Salsa dance music, led a world-record conga line at the 1988 Calle Ocho festival; her 2024 quarter made her the first Afro-Latina on U.S. currency.
Modern Miami wears all of it. PortMiami is the busiest cruise port in the world; the banks of Brickell face Latin America; the murals of Wynwood draw the art crowd north of downtown; and every November the snowbirds arrive on schedule, as they have since Flagler’s railroad first carried them. West of the city the Everglades begin, and offshore lies Biscayne National Park — manatees in the river channels, pelicans working the bay — the tropical frame around the only major mainland American city in the tropics.
Why People Visit Miami Florida
Miami offers a founding story with an orange blossom at its center, a refugee tower that welcomed the community that remade the city, cafecito through walk-up windows, boom-era Mediterranean fantasies, and tropical light on Biscayne Bay. Visitors come for Little Havana, the Deco-era heritage, the bay, the Everglades at the back door, and the winter that made the city famous. Magic City since 1896.