Art Deco Historic District

Roughly 800 buildings from the 1920s to 1940s packed into about one square mile of South Beach, the largest concentration of Art Deco architecture anywhere. Pastel facades, porthole windows, ziggurat rooflines, glass block and neon, most concentrated along Ocean Drive, Collins Avenue and Washington Avenue between 5th and 23rd Streets. Saved from demolition in the late 1970s by preservationist Barbara Capitman and now protected as a national historic district.

How to see it: the Miami Design Preservation League runs daily 90-minute walking tours from the Art Deco Welcome Center at 10th and Ocean, and a self-guided audio tour. Ocean Drive at dusk, when the neon comes on, is the postcard moment. Detour to the Colony, the Carlyle, the Breakwater and the Delano for the best-known facades.

Practical: free to wander; tours are ticketed. Very walkable, very crowded on weekend evenings. The district has doubled as a backdrop for Scarface, Miami Vice, The Birdcage and countless fashion shoots.