Florida's most underrated city — where the Tampa Riverwalk connects a waterfront arts district to the oldest Cuban exile community in America, Ybor City's hand-rolled cigar factories became a dining neighbourhood, craft breweries occupy warehouses alongside the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States, and Tampa Bay's barrier islands and 361 days of sunshine are less than 30 minutes away
Tampa (400,000; metro 3.3 million) is the largest city on Florida's Gulf Coast and the seat of Hillsborough County — chronically underestimated relative to Miami and Orlando but increasingly recognised as one of the most liveable and interesting cities in the American South. The Tampa Riverwalk (2.6 miles of continuous waterfront pathway along the Hillsborough River connecting the Tampa Convention Center to the Florida Aquarium) links a cluster of excellent cultural institutions: the Tampa Museum of Art (the finest permanent collection in Florida west of Miami), the Henry B. Plant Museum (hou…
Tampa's modern history begins with Vicente Martínez-Ybor's 1885 decision to relocate his Havana cigar factory to Hillsborough County — attracted by cheap land, deep water access, and the new Atlantic Coast Line Railroad connecting Tampa to the rest of the US. Ybor City became the 'Cigar Capital of the World' within a decade: by 1900, 12,000 workers (Cuban, Spanish, Italian, and African-American) were hand-rolling 300 million cigars annually, and Tampa's population tripled. The Columbia Restaurant (7th Avenue, Ybor City, opened 1905) is the oldest restaurant in Florida and the largest Spanish…