Free Things to Do in Miami

The Metromover is the single most useful free thing in Miami and most visitors never board it. It is a driverless elevated people-mover running three loops through downtown and Brickell, it costs nothing, there is no ticket and no tap, and it runs from early morning until around 10pm daily. The carriages are glass-fronted, they run one storey above the street, and the Brickell loop crosses the Miami River with a view down it.

Used properly, it turns downtown into a walkable day without a car. Park once, or arrive by Metrorail, and the Metromover reaches the museum park on the bayfront, the Freedom Tower, Bayside Marketplace, the courthouse district, Brickell City Centre and the river. It is also, unromantically, the best way to handle a hot afternoon: it is air-conditioned, it is free, and you can ride a full loop for twenty minutes and get off wherever looks interesting.

Attached to it are several free walks. The Miami Riverwalk follows the north bank of the working Miami River past the courthouse and under the bridges, which is a genuinely odd and good urban walk: cargo ships loading for the Caribbean a few hundred metres from a financial district. Bayfront Park sits on the water downtown with a playground, a fountain and open lawn used for concerts and the city's New Year's Eve event. And the Freedom Tower, a 1925 Mediterranean-revival building modelled on the Giralda in Seville, is worth standing in front of for what it is: the building where Cuban refugees were processed through the 1960s and 1970s, which is why it is often called the Ellis Island of the South.

Miami's free art layer is better than its ticketed one in places, and considerably better than most visitors realise.

Wynwood's street art. The Wynwood Walls themselves are a ticketed outdoor museum at around $12 for an adult. The street art on the blocks surrounding them is free and runs for many streets in every direction, some of it by the same artists. Do both if you have the budget; do the free version without hesitation if you do not. Go before eleven in the morning, because the district is unshaded warehouse concrete and punishing by afternoon.

The Institute of Contemporary Art in the Design District is free, permanently, with a sculpture garden at the back. Around it, the Design District's courtyards hold serious public art you can walk through without spending anything, including Buckminster Fuller's Fly's Eye Dome in Palm Court.

PAMM's second Saturday. The Pérez Art Museum Miami on the downtown bayfront is free to everyone on the second Saturday of the month, which also happens to be when it is busiest, so arrive at opening. The bayside terrace and hanging gardens are worth the trip on their own.

The Art Deco Historic District. Roughly 800 preserved buildings between roughly 5th and 23rd Streets in South Beach, the largest concentration of 1920s to 1940s deco architecture anywhere. Walking it is free. The Miami Design Preservation League's guided walk is paid and good, but the self-guided version costs nothing and the best hours are early morning for the façades and after dark for the neon.

Little Haiti Cultural Complex. The Caribbean Marketplace building, modelled on the iron market in Port-au-Prince, hosts free events and exhibitions, and the neighbourhood around it has botánicas and record shops.

The best free experience in Miami is walking a neighbourhood that is not a tourist zone, and three of them repay it.

Little Havana. Calle Ocho between roughly SW 12th and SW 17th Avenues costs nothing to walk. Máximo Gómez Park, known universally as Domino Park, is free to enter and watch; the tables belong to a club whose members are City of Miami residents aged 55 and over, so this is a spectating activity rather than a participatory one. The Walk of Fame stars are set into the pavement along the strip. Cigar shops roll at the window and will usually let you watch. The Bay of Pigs memorial stands at 13th Avenue. The single best time to come is the last Friday of the month, when Viernes Culturales closes part of Calle Ocho for a free festival with more than thirty local artists, live music and a free walking tour.

Coral Gables. A planned 1920s Mediterranean-revival city, free to wander, with banyan-lined boulevards, triumphal entrance gateways and low limestone street signs that are famously difficult to read from a car. Miracle Mile, the Biltmore's lobby and the streets around De Soto Plaza are all open to anyone on foot.

Coconut Grove. Older than the City of Miami, shaded, with a walkable village centre, the waterfront at Dinner Key and Peacock Park on the bay. Free, green and about twenty degrees more relaxed than anywhere else on this list.

The Design District is free to walk through, and you are not obliged to enter a single shop. The architecture and public art are the point.

One courtesy that applies to all of them: these are residential neighbourhoods where people live and work. Ask before photographing faces, park legally, and buy a coffee.