Centro Ybor and streetcar, Ybor City, Tampa, Florida
Photo: Peter K Burian / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Audio walking tour

Tampa Audio Walking Tour

Sunlit Bays & Cigar Stories

Stops
28
Core walk
26 of 28 stops within 1.5 mi of the center
Farthest stop
2.2 mi from the center
Start
Bayshore Boulevard
28 stops GPS-triggered audio No app download Free to start

Twenty-eight stops walk Tampa from palmetto-lined Bayshore Boulevard to Ybor City's cigar quarter. Bayshore Boulevard along Hillsborough Bay opens the route; Hyde Park's bungalows and the Moorish minarets of the University of Tampa's Plant Hall follow. The Henry B. Plant Museum, the 1858 Old School House, and 1899's Plant Field anchor the Gilded Age. Downtown holds the 1926 Tampa Theatre, Tampa City Hall, Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park on the Hillsborough River, the Tampa Museum of Art, Glazer Children's Museum, and the 2.6-mile Tampa Riverwalk. The Channel District gathers the Tampa Bay History Center, the SS American Victory, and the Florida Aquarium. Ybor City (founded by cigar manufacturers in the 1880s) carries the Ybor City Historic District, Ybor City Museum State Park in the old Ferlita Bakery, El Pasaje (the Cherokee Club), the Columbia Restaurant, La Segunda Bakery, El Centro Español, Circulo Cubano, Centro Asturiano, L'Unione Italiana, the Ybor Factory Building, The Ritz Ybor, and the Rialto Theatre close the walk.

Highlights

  • Centro Ybor and streetcar, Ybor City, Tampa, Florida
    Ybor City

    Ybor City begins here, a historic neighborhood just northeast of downtown Tampa. In the 1880s this place was founded by Vicente Martinez Ybor and other cigar manufacturers, who brought thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Spain, and Italy.

  • University of Tampa

    Moorish minarets rise over Plant Hall here at the University of Tampa, known officially as UTampa and once nicknamed UT or Tampa U, a private university accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools that today offers more than 200 programs of study, including 19 master's degrees. But look up - Plant Hall was not always a campus building.

  • This photo was taken just days after the SS American Victory returned to Berth 271 in Tampa, FL from 12 days in drydock in the summer of 2022. In drydock, the SS American Victory was carefully cleaned and painted. The design of the paint job is a reference to the dazzle schemes used on vessels during WWI and WW2.
    SS American Victory

    Here in Tampa, Florida's Channel District the SS American Victory is preserved as the main feature of the American Victory Ship & Museum. Built at the California Shipbuilding Yard in Los Angeles and launched after just 55 days, she was completed in June 1945 and entered service in the final months of World War II in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

  • Columbia Restaurant

    Columbia Restaurant occupies an entire city block here in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida. This is the oldest continuously operated restaurant in Florida and the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States.

  • Southern end of Bayshore Boulevard, looking north, in Tampa, Florida
    Bayshore Boulevard

    Notice the waterfront road around you, Bayshore Boulevard on Hillsborough Bay in South Tampa, just south of downtown Tampa. Beneath your feet is a 4.5-mile, 10-foot-wide sidewalk, the second longest continuous sidewalk in the United States, after Seawall Boulevard in Galveston, Texas.

All 28 stops

How it works

1

Open on your phone

No download. Works in Safari or Chrome.

2

Start walking

Head toward any historic stop. No fixed route.

3

Audio plays itself

Walk within range of a stop and the story begins.

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Three stops free. No account needed.

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