Ocean Drive

Look past the neon at the buildings themselves: 1930s Tropical Art Deco, designed to beat the Florida heat long before air conditioning.

In the 1930s, Miami Beach was rebuilt for middle-class vacationers, and Ocean Drive filled with small hotels in a new style: rounded corners, porthole windows and concrete ledges that shade the windows from the sun. By the 1970s the hotels had become retirement homes and the street was fading fast. Preservationists fought the bulldozers, and in 1979 the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Then Miami Vice, fashion shoots and the Versace Mansion put Ocean Drive back on screens around the world. Today it is the Miami people travel to see: pastel hotels lit in neon at night, sidewalk cafes spilling onto the street, and the beach just across the road. It stays busy, loud and photogenic from morning until late at night.