Miami

Miami is a city on Biscayne Bay in southeastern Florida and the seat of Miami-Dade County. Little Havana, along Calle Ocho, is the center of Cuban exile life in the United States, with cafes serving Cuban coffee and the domino players of Máximo Gómez Park.

The Tequesta people lived at the mouth of the Miami River for many centuries before Europeans arrived. Julia Tuttle, a landowner from Ohio, persuaded Henry Flagler to bring his Florida East Coast Railway to the bay, and the city was incorporated in 1896, the only major American city founded by a woman. A land boom in the 1920s filled the area with new towns and hotels. Cuban exiles arrived in large numbers from the end of the 1950s and changed the language, food and politics of the city. In the following decades Miami became a center of trade and banking with Latin America.

Royal Caribbean Group, the cruise company, has its headquarters at PortMiami on Dodge Island, and Norwegian Cruise Line is based nearby. Burger King has had its headquarters in Miami since its early years, and Lennar builds houses across the United States from its offices in the city.

Vizcaya, the Italian Renaissance-style villa of the industrialist James Deering, was finished in 1916 with formal gardens on the bay. The Freedom Tower, built for a newspaper in the 1920s, received Cuban refugees in the 1960s and is now a museum. The Pérez Art Museum Miami, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, stands on the bay with hanging gardens on its terraces. The Wynwood Walls cover former warehouses with large murals by street artists from around the world.