Tampa learned early how to throw a party and chase the future at once. The first Gasparilla festival sailed into the bay in 1904, a civic carnival built around the legend of the pirate Jose Gaspar that still fills the streets every January. A decade later, on the first day of 1914, the aviator Tony Jannus flew the world's first scheduled commercial airline flight across the bay from St. Petersburg to Tampa — the beginning of an entire industry, launched over Tampa's water.
Tampa is Cigar City — a Fort Brooke frontier post that immigrant tabaqueros turned into the cigar capital of the world, crowned with silver minarets and guarded, once a year, by pirates. Our Tampa designs gather that into wearable form. Wear Cigar City. Cigar City. Rolled by hand since 1885.
Why People Visit Tampa
Tampa draws travelers who want real heritage with Gulf sunshine — the brick-and-cigar history of Ybor's Latin Quarter, the fairy-tale minarets of Plant's hotel, the bay and the Riverwalk, and a pirate festival unlike anywhere else. It is a city that wears its immigrant, working-waterfront story openly, an easy gateway to the Gulf beaches just across the bay.
