Haunted Pub Crawl Near Me: Gianni's Bar at the Former Versace Mansion

Search haunted pub crawl near me on Ocean Drive and the stop every tour fights over is the former home of Gianni Versace. Today the mansion at 1116 Ocean Drive is The Villa Casa Casuarina, a boutique hotel, and its public way in is Gianni's, the Italian-Mediterranean restaurant with a bar menu served only at the bar. It is the most expensive drink on a South Beach crawl, and the most loaded with history.

Even the name comes wrapped in legend. The hotel says the story holds that Casa Casuarina honors the only tree left standing on the lot after the 1926 hurricane, an Australian pine. Freeman died in the house at the end of 1937, and it was sold and cut up into apartments, first the Amsterdam Palace and later the Christopher Columbus Apartments, before anyone thought of it as a fashion house.

Versace bought it in 1992 for $2.95 million, and the hotel says he also bought the neighboring Revere Hotel and demolished it to make room for the pool and garden. On the morning of July 15, 1997, walking home from News Cafe, he was shot on the front steps by Andrew Cunanan. Those steps are still there on the sidewalk side of Ocean Drive, and most visitors stop there before they ever reach the bar.

This is where the haunted crawl takes over the story. US Ghost Adventures, which runs the Miami Haunts tours, tells guests that caretakers have reported shuffling within the walls late at night and that legend has Versace's ghost wandering the halls, crying for his mother. The same operator repeats rumors of mafia executions in the house. None of that has any record behind it, so take it as tour patter, not history.

The operator's pub crawl, the Miami Haunts Boos and Booze Haunted Pub Crawl, meets at 6 pm outside the Art Deco Welcome Center at 1001 Ocean Drive, runs up to two hours, and is limited to guests 21 and over with ID. Its page names the Onyx Bar at the Villa as a stop alongside Mac's Club Deuce and Lummus Park, and it asks guests not to carry drinks between bars. The crawl even suggests ordering the gold margarita.

That margarita is the 24 Karat Golden Margarita, and Gianni's prices it at $24 on its 2026 cocktail menu: silver tequila, fresh lime, a splash of orange juice, Cointreau and gold flakes, with a salted rim. It is theatrical in exactly the way the house was under Versace. If gold is too much, the Giannis Spritz with Aperol, prosecco, club soda and a splash of elderflower is $20, the cheapest cocktail on the card.

The rest of the cocktail list stays in the low to mid twenties. Passion in the Mansion, with ALB vodka, lemon, passion fruit puree and a prosecco top, is $26. The Medusa mixes Daylight rum, mint, mango and lemon with club soda for $22, and the Mojito de la Villa is $24. Every price on the menu excludes a 20% service charge and 9% tax, so budget accordingly.

Know the difference between the bars before you go. The hotel lists the Onyx Bar among its leisure amenities, but its accommodations page groups it with the Rooftop Lounge and the Thousand Mosaic Pool under exclusive access for guests, and the official site publishes no separate public hours for it. Non-guests should plan around Gianni's, which posts its own hours and takes reservations.

Gianni's serves lunch daily from 11 am to 3:30 pm and dinner daily from 5:30 to 10:30 pm, under executive chef Scott Brown. A 5:30 pm booking lets you finish a drink before the 6 pm crawl meets a block south.

The setting is why people pay mansion prices. Tables sit around the courtyard and the pool that Versace built where the Revere Hotel stood, lined with the mosaic tile that gives it its name. Ownership after Versace moved quickly: Peter Loftin bought the house in 2000 and turned it into a hotel, and the Nakash family's VM South Beach bought it at a bankruptcy auction in 2013 for $41.5 million.

For the walking part, start at the Art Deco Welcome Center at 1001 Ocean Drive, open from 9 am to 5 pm, where the Miami Design Preservation League runs its Art Deco Museum. Across the road, Lummus Park runs along Ocean Drive from 5th Street to 14th Place and is open from sunrise to midnight, so a late walk on the beach side between bars is easy.

Getting here by trolley means walking one block. The free South Beach Trolley does not run on Ocean Drive; its nearest stops are Washington Avenue and 12th Street southbound and Washington Avenue and 11th Street northbound, and it runs from 8 am to 11 pm about every 20 minutes. The city's 12th Street and 13th Street garages charge $2 for the first hour and a $15 flat rate from 8 pm to 5 am Friday through Sunday.

Practical notes: Gianni's at The Villa Casa Casuarina is at 1116 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139. Book ahead on weekends and around Halloween, when the crawl brings groups past the door. The hotel has announced no Halloween 2026 event. Treat the Onyx Bar as a guest space unless the staff invite you in, and finish your glass before leaving, since the crawl does not let guests carry drinks between bars.

Gianni's suits crawlers who want one splurge in the middle of a cheap night: a gold-flake margarita, a seat by the mosaic pool and the house where one of the most famous crimes in Miami Beach happened. It is a poor fit for a fast, low-budget bar hop. Pair it with a $6 beer at Mac's Club Deuce three blocks north and you get both ends of South Beach in one walk.