HistoryMiami
HistoryMiami
4
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Thursday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Friday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sunday
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM
About
HistoryMiami is the premier cultural institution committed to gathering, organizing, preserving and celebrating Miami's history as the unique crossroads of the Americas.
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The area
Address
Neighbourhood: Downtown
How to get there
- Government Center • 2 min walk
- Government Center • 2 min walk
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4.0
194 reviews
Excellent
79
Very good
77
Average
29
Poor
5
Terrible
4
Diane K
Venice, FL4,572 contributions
Jan 2023 • Couples
There are two buildings of exhibits. If you are mainly interested in learning about the area - I suggest you go to the second building first. Also if you park at the multilevel parking garage across the street from the museum you can have your ticket stamped and only pay $5.
Written 11 January 2023
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Tourist598156
24 contributions
Jan 2023 • Friends
The museum has greatly improved since it expanded into the South building (formerly the Miami Art Museum). I highly recommend attending one of the guided weekend tours of its permanent collections, then visiting the exhibits in the South building. Through Feb. 12 it is hosting an outstanding exhibit (curated by the NY Historical Society) entitled “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow.” The museum is accessible by metro rail; it validates parking at the cultural center garage on 2d Ave. The building is part of a complex that was designed by Phillip Johnson.
Written 29 January 2023
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
MoItaly
Florida316 contributions
Dec 2021
The History Miami Museum was a nice surprise. It is definitely not one of the most celebrated museums in Miami, but it turned out to be very interesting.
The best part is in the second building, north of the main ones; we spent almost 2 hours there and you can learn a lot about the history of Miami.
I definitely recommend a visit but take your time in the 2nd bldg. to read what you are looking at.
The best part is in the second building, north of the main ones; we spent almost 2 hours there and you can learn a lot about the history of Miami.
I definitely recommend a visit but take your time in the 2nd bldg. to read what you are looking at.
Written 1 January 2022
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Mark cloherty
5 contributions
Mar 2023
Miami has a fascinating history, the museum is good but is a bit limited. One floor was closed when we visited and there wasn't much on Miami history in the 70s, 80s and 90's. That was a real shame. Best option is to travel there by train, parking is very difficult in that area of downtown. There are some fun things to do for kids, we took our children and they enjoyed it, like the chalk boards
Written 16 March 2023
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Nancy C
Collingswood, NJ33 contributions
Feb 2024 • Couples
Located in a surprisingly big and beautiful plaza shared with the Miami-Dade Public Library, HistoryMiami offers several hours of entertainment for the curious traveler. We spent a couple of hours combing through the photographs on the first floor and were fascinated by an exhibit on the influential Whitman family, complete with artifacts, photographs and video narrated by family members. Exhibits on the upper floor guide you through the history of the area in a fascinating array of artifacts with interesting text and video. You can even walk through and old trolley car and view videos in the Art Deco theater. We left for lunch at El Cacique, a local Cuban cafe across the street, then returned to explore the special exhibit on mythic creatures in the South Building. Wonderful experience.
Written 26 February 2024
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Debra H
16 contributions
Mar 2022
This was not as good as I had hoped for my grandson and myself. It lost his interest quickly and he rushed thru it, though he is very interested in history and an excellent reader. The place was very clean and neat with staff around to help if you needed it. The section of the city made us a bit nervous but we are from a small town so Miami was a bit overwhelming anyway! I would not advise it for younger children.
Written 27 March 2022
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Vincent M
New Orleans, LA2,256 contributions
Nov 2015 • Friends
I have been to Miami many, many times and had never gone to the HistoryMiami museum. Frankly, Miami simply hasn't got much history compared to, say, Detroit or St Louis--let alone Boston, New York, Montreal or New Orleans. However, I was impressed: the museum is much larger than I had expected. Its curatorship is excellent, its exhibits are interesting, and its scope goes beyond the city of Miami to include all of South Florida. Some notable exhibits:
1. Lots of artifacts from the Age of Exploration, including Spanish artillery-pieces and a wall-full of centuries-old maps and charts—one, an 18th century French map, still referred to northern Florida as “French Florida” based on Ribault’s ill-fated settlement of what’s now Jacksonville in the 1500s.
2. Great information on the Spanish treasure fleets, shipwrecks, pirates, and sunken treasure—including display cases full of loot salvaged from Spanish wrecks.
3. Excellent information on the “indigenous” inhabitants—who weren’t exactly indigenous: the Europeans got to Florida first. Sir Francis Drake raided Saint Augustine 200 years before the Creeks began to move down from Georgia and the Carolinas and became the Seminoles. Still, to give them credit, even if they were neither pre-Columbian nor native, Florida’s Seminoles were important pathfinders—Georgians and Carolinians have been following their footsteps down to Miami ever since. Just check out the license plates on Collins Ave.
4. Very good information on the Keys in general, and in particular Key West: the only antebellum city in south Florida, a maritime waystation between Saint Augustine and Pensacola, and known for wreckers and spongers. The latter weren’t modern “can you spare a few bucks” spongers—but divers who swam down on a lungful of air to bring up living sponges to be transformed into accessories for milady’s boudoir. Their upscale occupational cousins, pearl divers, looked down on lowly spongers with disdain—if you’ve ever been downwind of a pile of rotting sponges, you’d know why—but hey, whatever it takes to make a dollar or doubloon….
5. Displays and historic photographs on the earliest US settlers to what is now Miami-Dade County, giving you a good feel for the challenges they faced, including the Seminole Wars. `
6. A lot of information on the spectacular local real estate development craze of the 1920s. No less an economist than John Kenneth Galbraith has argued that the bursting of the speculative Florida real estate bubble set the stage for the Great Crash and the Depression; so this colorful story is of more than purely local interest.
7. A timeline of exhibits chronicling the growth of Miami from the Roaring 20s, and its transformation into a modern, and unique, world city.
7. Exhibits on Miami’s culture. I was particularly interested in the exhibit showing masks, beaded necklaces and other paraphernalia of the Santeria religion, a syncretic blend of West African religion with Catholicism. Santeria is practiced in former Spanish Caribbean colonies, and hence in Miami. Living in Louisiana and having been to Brazil, I’m familiar with the parallel religions of Voodoo (in former French colonies) and Candomble (in the former Portuguese one), but this is the first museum I’ve seen that discusses Santeria. A note for those readers familiar with the Matamoros murders: Santeria is unfairly castigated due to the human sacrifices of the Santerio Adolfo Constanzo, but he was no more typical of Santeria than the Spanish Inquisition is of Catholicism.
All the above permanent exhibits are in the northern museum building (furthest from Flagler Street. A second building, to the southeast, has an interactive center and houses temporary exhibits; currently they have one on Operation Pedro Pan. When Castro overthrew Batista in 1959, conservative and upper-class Catholic families feared that their children would be brainwashed by the Communists, and even that their children might be shipped off to labor camps in Siberia. With support from the Catholic Church, over 14,000 unaccompanied children were air-lifted from Cuba to the US, the largest such child-migration in Western hemisphere history. This high-tech exhibit tells the powerful story of their exodus, and includes narratives by living Miamians who as children were uprooted and transplanted as part of the human cargo. This exhibit will run through January 17th. Without the Pedro Pan exhibit, I would still rate HistoryMiami as Very Good. With it, if you can get there in time, I upgrade the rating to Excellent.
Opportunities for improvement: the museum discusses the natural history of the area, but I wish it did so at greater length—South Florida occupies a unique biological spot on the planet. I also would have liked more info on public health: the history of Miami is inextricably linked to public health: South Florida’s climate should have been a magnet attracting mass settlement (as it does today), but the medical hazards were so horrific—malaria, yellow jack, and so on—that disease effectively barred the door until the early 20th century revolution in public health finally made Miami survivable. It’s a powerful story, central to Miami history, and this would be the perfect place for it to be told at some length.
Logistics: HistoryMiami is on Flagler between NW 1st and 2nd. A GPS is extremely useful, because the museum is bordered on two sides by both a river and an interstate highway; and on all sides by one-way streets. Parking is available nearby in garages and lots, but their city-center rates are quite steep. You can save a bundle by finding a parking spot on the street. Even though you have to pay to street-park, that’s chump change compared to commercial parking venues. The commercial-lot deal-breaker for me was that the garage demanded that I tell them in advance how long I’d be parked—ergo, if I overestimated how long I’d spend in the museum, I’d be paying top dollar for a parking space I was no longer using, and if I underestimated, I’d have to skip some museum halls. In fact, I would have underestimated, expecting to spend an hour or so, and actually spending all afternoon there, and racing through several halls as the museum was about to close. The museum staff was happy to let us leave temporarily to reset the meter. Obviously we weren’t the first visitors who’d needed to feed a meter. On the other hand, if you do decide to park all day at a downtown commercial lot, you’ll be happy to learn that the US Bankruptcy Court is conveniently located just around the corner from the museum, should you unexpectedly need its services. My estimated length of visit is more than 3 hours, based on you all being thoughtful adults; I don’t think small children would keep their interest in this museum for that long.
1. Lots of artifacts from the Age of Exploration, including Spanish artillery-pieces and a wall-full of centuries-old maps and charts—one, an 18th century French map, still referred to northern Florida as “French Florida” based on Ribault’s ill-fated settlement of what’s now Jacksonville in the 1500s.
2. Great information on the Spanish treasure fleets, shipwrecks, pirates, and sunken treasure—including display cases full of loot salvaged from Spanish wrecks.
3. Excellent information on the “indigenous” inhabitants—who weren’t exactly indigenous: the Europeans got to Florida first. Sir Francis Drake raided Saint Augustine 200 years before the Creeks began to move down from Georgia and the Carolinas and became the Seminoles. Still, to give them credit, even if they were neither pre-Columbian nor native, Florida’s Seminoles were important pathfinders—Georgians and Carolinians have been following their footsteps down to Miami ever since. Just check out the license plates on Collins Ave.
4. Very good information on the Keys in general, and in particular Key West: the only antebellum city in south Florida, a maritime waystation between Saint Augustine and Pensacola, and known for wreckers and spongers. The latter weren’t modern “can you spare a few bucks” spongers—but divers who swam down on a lungful of air to bring up living sponges to be transformed into accessories for milady’s boudoir. Their upscale occupational cousins, pearl divers, looked down on lowly spongers with disdain—if you’ve ever been downwind of a pile of rotting sponges, you’d know why—but hey, whatever it takes to make a dollar or doubloon….
5. Displays and historic photographs on the earliest US settlers to what is now Miami-Dade County, giving you a good feel for the challenges they faced, including the Seminole Wars. `
6. A lot of information on the spectacular local real estate development craze of the 1920s. No less an economist than John Kenneth Galbraith has argued that the bursting of the speculative Florida real estate bubble set the stage for the Great Crash and the Depression; so this colorful story is of more than purely local interest.
7. A timeline of exhibits chronicling the growth of Miami from the Roaring 20s, and its transformation into a modern, and unique, world city.
7. Exhibits on Miami’s culture. I was particularly interested in the exhibit showing masks, beaded necklaces and other paraphernalia of the Santeria religion, a syncretic blend of West African religion with Catholicism. Santeria is practiced in former Spanish Caribbean colonies, and hence in Miami. Living in Louisiana and having been to Brazil, I’m familiar with the parallel religions of Voodoo (in former French colonies) and Candomble (in the former Portuguese one), but this is the first museum I’ve seen that discusses Santeria. A note for those readers familiar with the Matamoros murders: Santeria is unfairly castigated due to the human sacrifices of the Santerio Adolfo Constanzo, but he was no more typical of Santeria than the Spanish Inquisition is of Catholicism.
All the above permanent exhibits are in the northern museum building (furthest from Flagler Street. A second building, to the southeast, has an interactive center and houses temporary exhibits; currently they have one on Operation Pedro Pan. When Castro overthrew Batista in 1959, conservative and upper-class Catholic families feared that their children would be brainwashed by the Communists, and even that their children might be shipped off to labor camps in Siberia. With support from the Catholic Church, over 14,000 unaccompanied children were air-lifted from Cuba to the US, the largest such child-migration in Western hemisphere history. This high-tech exhibit tells the powerful story of their exodus, and includes narratives by living Miamians who as children were uprooted and transplanted as part of the human cargo. This exhibit will run through January 17th. Without the Pedro Pan exhibit, I would still rate HistoryMiami as Very Good. With it, if you can get there in time, I upgrade the rating to Excellent.
Opportunities for improvement: the museum discusses the natural history of the area, but I wish it did so at greater length—South Florida occupies a unique biological spot on the planet. I also would have liked more info on public health: the history of Miami is inextricably linked to public health: South Florida’s climate should have been a magnet attracting mass settlement (as it does today), but the medical hazards were so horrific—malaria, yellow jack, and so on—that disease effectively barred the door until the early 20th century revolution in public health finally made Miami survivable. It’s a powerful story, central to Miami history, and this would be the perfect place for it to be told at some length.
Logistics: HistoryMiami is on Flagler between NW 1st and 2nd. A GPS is extremely useful, because the museum is bordered on two sides by both a river and an interstate highway; and on all sides by one-way streets. Parking is available nearby in garages and lots, but their city-center rates are quite steep. You can save a bundle by finding a parking spot on the street. Even though you have to pay to street-park, that’s chump change compared to commercial parking venues. The commercial-lot deal-breaker for me was that the garage demanded that I tell them in advance how long I’d be parked—ergo, if I overestimated how long I’d spend in the museum, I’d be paying top dollar for a parking space I was no longer using, and if I underestimated, I’d have to skip some museum halls. In fact, I would have underestimated, expecting to spend an hour or so, and actually spending all afternoon there, and racing through several halls as the museum was about to close. The museum staff was happy to let us leave temporarily to reset the meter. Obviously we weren’t the first visitors who’d needed to feed a meter. On the other hand, if you do decide to park all day at a downtown commercial lot, you’ll be happy to learn that the US Bankruptcy Court is conveniently located just around the corner from the museum, should you unexpectedly need its services. My estimated length of visit is more than 3 hours, based on you all being thoughtful adults; I don’t think small children would keep their interest in this museum for that long.
Written 6 December 2015
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
born2travelit
Cesena, Italy17,163 contributions
Feb 2013 • Couples
we suggest to visit this musuem on the second saturday of the month 'cos it's free otherwise the ticket of 8 usd would be really too much for it.
the collection is poor and there is nothing really impressive.
i m sure that you could find many better ways to expalin and tell the history of this amazing city.
don't forget to visit it on the second saturday of each month.
;-)
the collection is poor and there is nothing really impressive.
i m sure that you could find many better ways to expalin and tell the history of this amazing city.
don't forget to visit it on the second saturday of each month.
;-)
Written 9 February 2013
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
TheLeongOhana
United States7,505 contributions
Oct 2021 • Solo
Getting to the museum was easy from the government center metromover station. It was short walk and located right next to the main Miami Dade Public Library on the other side of a large courtyard.
I entered the larger building on the left of the courtyard. Initially I was greeted and told that the entrance fee was waived if I signed in.
This was not a very popular museum even though it was a weekend visit. Consisting of two buildings and two floors I maybe saw at most half a dozen other visitors. However this was perfect for me to enjoy the museum almost all to myself.
The largest wing consisted of a research center (closed), large Miami mural and a room dedicated to a local family on the first floor. The second floor was more interesting as it traced the evolution of Miami from the first native Americans, Spanish discoverers through the present. There was even a portion dedicated to those who came to Florida as boat refugees from Cuba or Haiti. Two boats were on display and I was amazed that they somehow survived the journey.
In the other building the first floor contained a mixture of displays covering Pan Am airlines, dugout canoe, planetarium projector and many examples of souvenirs or household items playing off the sunshine state theme. A large chalkboard wall was available for visitors to draw or leave a message behind. On the second floor a rare collection of bird drawings from John James Audubon was displayed along with other historical documents. A unique display focused on devastation from hurricanes with damaged and broken pieces collected from one hurricane.
Overall a good collection of interesting displays and topics worth a visit to see.
I entered the larger building on the left of the courtyard. Initially I was greeted and told that the entrance fee was waived if I signed in.
This was not a very popular museum even though it was a weekend visit. Consisting of two buildings and two floors I maybe saw at most half a dozen other visitors. However this was perfect for me to enjoy the museum almost all to myself.
The largest wing consisted of a research center (closed), large Miami mural and a room dedicated to a local family on the first floor. The second floor was more interesting as it traced the evolution of Miami from the first native Americans, Spanish discoverers through the present. There was even a portion dedicated to those who came to Florida as boat refugees from Cuba or Haiti. Two boats were on display and I was amazed that they somehow survived the journey.
In the other building the first floor contained a mixture of displays covering Pan Am airlines, dugout canoe, planetarium projector and many examples of souvenirs or household items playing off the sunshine state theme. A large chalkboard wall was available for visitors to draw or leave a message behind. On the second floor a rare collection of bird drawings from John James Audubon was displayed along with other historical documents. A unique display focused on devastation from hurricanes with damaged and broken pieces collected from one hurricane.
Overall a good collection of interesting displays and topics worth a visit to see.
Written 30 October 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Aransas
Eagle, NE30 contributions
Aug 2016 • Solo
So in an hour or two you can get a very decent feel for the history and culture of Miami. A great effort telling an interesting story of the community. They also have a new building with traveling exhibits. I went to see the photography exhibit, which was great and my favorite part, but I enjoyed the other special exhibits as well.
Many photos and artifacts but a nice way to stay out of the heat on a summer afternoon.
Very affordable ($8 bucks senior, military and military families free from memorial day to labor day). Remember to get your parking ticket stamped so you can get reduced rates in the parking garage.
Not a lot of little-kid friendly stuff so make sure your kids are a bit older. Very friendly and attentive staff with lots of local knowledge.
Many photos and artifacts but a nice way to stay out of the heat on a summer afternoon.
Very affordable ($8 bucks senior, military and military families free from memorial day to labor day). Remember to get your parking ticket stamped so you can get reduced rates in the parking garage.
Not a lot of little-kid friendly stuff so make sure your kids are a bit older. Very friendly and attentive staff with lots of local knowledge.
Written 10 August 2016
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Don't know. I stayed on Miami beach. This museum is in the center of the city of Miami. But you can use the Trip advisor to locate a hotel nearby.
Written 6 September 2016
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