Geography shaped all of it. St. Petersburg sits on the tip of the Pinellas peninsula, with Tampa Bay on one side and Boca Ciega Bay and the Gulf beaches on the other — so much shoreline that more than half the city’s area is water. Waterfront parks ring the downtown, Sunken Gardens has kept its tropical jungle growing in the heart of the city for a century, and out at the peninsula’s end Fort De Soto guards miles of quiet beach. This is a city you are never far from the water in, and it has built its best life right at the edge of it.
The 1920s land boom built much of the city you still see today, including the grand Mediterranean-style Vinoy resort that opened on the bayfront in 1925. Baseball came with the sunshine — major-league clubs have held spring training in St. Petersburg for more than a century, and the bayfront ballfields were a fixture of the season. Hurricanes and the Depression slowed the boom, and the city weathered both, but the climate kept bringing people back, and St. Petersburg settled into a long, easy life as a sunny Gulf-coast resort town.
Why People Visit St Petersburg
St. Petersburg mixes sunshine, shoreline, and a genuine arts scene in a way few Florida cities can. Visitors come for the waterfront museums and murals, the pier and the bayfront parks, the nearby Gulf beaches, and the easy, bright pace of a city that has earned its Sunshine City name for more than a century. History sits comfortably beside everyday life here, from the spot where the first airline took flight to the gardens and galleries downtown, and the water is never more than a few blocks away.
