Before Tampa was a port city or a pirate festival, it was a cigar town — and the Tampa Bay History Center’s galleries tell how Vicente Martínez Ybor’s factories turned a sleepy Gulf village into the Cigar Capital of the World.
The exhibits follow the leaf: Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants rolling 500 million cigars a year at the industry’s peak, the lectors who read newspapers and novels aloud on the factory floor, the mutual-aid clubs of Ybor City and West Tampa, and the strikes and changes that reshaped the craft. Factory artifacts, cigar art and a recreated look at a roller’s day make the era fragrant with detail.
It’s the essential prologue to any Ybor City visit — see the story here, then walk Seventh Avenue where it happened.
Tampa’s accent was rolled by hand. The History Center keeps the recipe.
