The city’s second founding came by sea and by air. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, waves of exiles remade Miami across the decades, and the Freedom Tower — the old newspaper tower of 1925 — served from 1962 to 1974 as the Cuban Refugee Center, the "Ellis Island of the South," where hundreds of thousands of arrivals were processed into new American lives. Little Havana grew around Calle Ocho: the ventanitas passing cafecito across the counter, croquetas and pastelitos in the bakery cases, guayaberas on Sunday, dominoes clacking at Máximo Gómez Park. Little Haiti added its own quarter to the north, and Hialeah, just beyond the city line, grew into the Cuban-American heartland of the metro. Overtown, the historic heart of Black Miami once called the Harlem of the South, kept its own stage lights burning at the Lyric Theater. Miami became a city that lives in Spanish and a dozen other languages at once — the gateway to Latin America, facing south and belonging to both hemispheres.
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.
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.