WYNWOOD WALLS, Wynwood Walls

The Wynwood Walls are the famous murals in the Wynwood neighborhood that make up one of the world’s largest open-air art galleries.

First of all, take a look around you. As you can see, this used to be one of the least chic neighborhoods of Miami, and was mostly home to warehouses and factories which have now closed. It was not until the start of the new millennium that the area underwent a transformation which turned it into one of the city’s must-see destinations for visitors.

Many artists chose Wynwood as the ideal place to open up their workshops, which over the years have become famous art galleries. But the neighborhood has earned a place as a “wonder of the world” today largely thanks to a real estate developer and art aficionado named Tony Goldman.

Goldman owned a number of blocks in the neighborhood, and decided to turn them into a street art museum. He offered a group of artists the huge, windowless walls of an industrial building complex he owned, thus creating the Wynwood Walls. The run-down concrete structures were decorated with murals in a spectacular variety of vibrant colors. What were once dismal warehouses, became canvases upon which the finest street artists from America and beyond could express their creativity.

In addition to the murals, you can also visit numerous art galleries, most of them dedicated to paintings, but also with a keen eye for sculpture and more modern art forms.

Let me leave you with an interesting fact: unfortunately, as often happens, in recent times the area has attracted the interest of property speculators in search of an easy dollar, so many artists have decided to move their workshops out of the neighborhood, and some of the galleries have been replaced with more profitable businesses.