Explore Tampa

Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Florida Avenue in downtown Tampa was completed in 1905 in Romanesque Revival style, of granite and marble, for a parish founded in 1860. Its octagonal dome rises 29 metres, and the interior has stained-glass windows made in Munich; Franciscan friars run the parish.

Tampa Theatre on Franklin Street opened in 1926 as an atmospheric movie palace designed by John Eberson, its auditorium made to look like a Mediterranean courtyard under a night sky. Saved from demolition in 1973, it shows films daily, hosts concerts and has a Wurlitzer theatre organ.

The Tampa Riverwalk is a 4-km waterfront path along the east bank of the Hillsborough River and the Garrison Channel, from Armature Works to the Channel District. It links Curtis Hixon Park, the Tampa Museum of Art, the Straz Center and the Florida Aquarium, with busts of local historical figures along the way.

The Glazer Children's Museum in Curtis Hixon Park, downtown Tampa, opened in 2010 in a building with a colourful façade beside the Tampa Museum of Art. Its 35,000 square feet of hands-on exhibits let children play at being firefighters, vets, pilots and shopkeepers, build, climb and experiment with water.

The Tampa Museum of Art in Curtis Hixon Park opened its current building on the Hillsborough River in 2010, an aluminium-clad box by Stanley Saitowitz that glows with LED light at night. Its collection spans Greek and Roman antiquities, one of the largest in the southeastern United States, and modern and contemporary art.

The Henry B. Plant Museum occupies the south wing of the former Tampa Bay Hotel, built in 1891 by railway magnate Henry B. Plant in Moorish Revival style with silver minarets; the rest is now the University of Tampa. Restored rooms show the hotel's Gilded Age furnishings, art and guests' life.

The David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts on the Hillsborough River in downtown Tampa opened in 1987 and is one of the largest performing arts centres in the southeastern United States. Its five theatres host touring Broadway shows, Opera Tampa, concerts, dance and comedy.

The Tampa Bay History Center on the Riverwalk covers 12,000 years of the region's history over three floors: its first peoples, Spanish explorers, the cigar industry of Ybor City and the growth of modern Tampa. The Touchton Map Library holds maps of Florida from five centuries, and a pirate-ship gallery shows the age of sail.

The Florida Aquarium in Tampa's Channel District opened in 1995 under a shell-shaped glass dome. Its galleries follow water from Florida's springs and wetlands to a coral reef tank of about 1.9 million litres, with sharks, sea turtles, penguins and an outdoor splash area; it also runs a coral restoration programme.

Ybor City Museum State Park tells the story of Tampa's cigar-making district, founded in 1886 by Vicente Martinez Ybor, whose Cuban, Spanish and Italian workers made it a centre of the cigar trade. The museum is in the 1923 Ferlita Bakery, beside a restored cigar worker's cottage and a garden.

Bayshore Boulevard runs about 7 km along Hillsborough Bay from downtown Tampa to Gandy Boulevard. Its balustraded sidewalk, about 7.6 km long, is among the longest continuous sidewalks in the United States and is used by walkers, runners and cyclists, with views across the bay and of the historic houses of Hyde Park.

ZooTampa at Lowry Park, on the Hillsborough River in north Tampa, keeps more than 1,300 animals in areas devoted to Florida, Africa, Asia and Australia. It runs one of the few non-profit hospitals for injured and orphaned manatees, which visitors can see in its Manatee Critical Care Center.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is an African-themed theme park and zoo in north Tampa, opened in 1959 by Anheuser-Busch. It keeps more than 200 animal species, with a safari across the Serengeti Plain, and has roller coasters such as SheiKra, Montu, Cheetah Hunt and Iron Gwazi.

MOSI, the Museum of Science and Industry in north Tampa, is a hands-on science centre founded in 1962. Its exhibits cover the human body, flight, space and weather, with a planetarium, a butterfly garden and a high-wire bicycle ride for visitors.