Ybor City Museum State Park

A museum preserving the history of Tampa's historic Latin Quarter, housed in the 1923 Ferlita Bakery building. The cigar industry once made Ybor City the "Cigar Capital of the World," employing thousands of immigrants.

The Ybor City Museum State Park, housed in the historic Ferlita Bakery, preserves the unique cultural heritage of what was once known as the Cigar Capital of the World. From 1886 until the 1930s, Ybor City flourished with Cuban culture and cigar manufacturing. The neighborhood's history includes the largest fire in Tampa's history in 1914, which consumed 17 city blocks and tragically took many lives. Buildings dating to the late 1800s and early 1900s have accumulated numerous hauntings and apparitions. The nearby Cuban Club, often described as America's most haunted place, is said to house 300 spirits with bitter and tragic tales. A woman named Rosalita haunts the 3rd-floor ballroom—she spurned a man's advances at a dance, and the jilted suitor threw her off the balcony to her death. The streets of Ybor are said to crawl with spirits from Native American bones to mass graves of Yellow Fever victims. J.C. Newman's El Reloj factory, built in 1910, is America's oldest operating cigar factory and hosts haunted experiences in its forbidden basement. The Don Vincente Hotel, built in 1895 and now Casa Ybor, was featured on Travel Channel's The Dead Files and is considered one of America's most haunted buildings, having served as a hotel, meeting house, and hospital. Ghost tours explore Ybor's haunted past of murder, mayhem, and cigar smoke where phantoms still linger.