Aside from riverside warehouses in various states of dilapidation around the northern end of Franklin Street (once the district's main drag and still the best place to get your bearings), recalling the city's past is largely left to plaques detailing everything from the passage of sixteenth-century explorer Hernando de Soto to the site of Florida's first radio station. None of the contemporary buildings in downtown Tampa better reflects the city's cultural striving than the highly regarded Tampa Museum of Art , on the banks of the Hillsborough River at 600 N Ashley Drive (Tues, Wed, Fri & Sat 10am-5pm, Thurs 10am-8pm, Sun 1-5pm, closed Mon; $5; free Thurs 5-8pm & Sat 10am-noon; tel 813/274-8130, ). The museum specializes in classical antiquities and twentieth-century American art. Selections from the permanent modern stock are cleverly blended with prime loaned specimens of recent US painting, photography and sculpture.

From Curtis-Hixson Park you'll see the silver minarets and cupolas on the far side of the river, sprouting from the main building of the University of Tampa - formerly the 500-room Tampa Bay Hotel , financed by steamship and railroad magnate Henry B. Plant. To reach it, walk across the river on Kennedy Boulevard and descend the steps into Plant Park.

The structure is as bizarre a sight today as it was at its opening in 1891. Plant had been buying up bankrupt railroads since the Civil War, steadily inching his way into Florida to meet his steamships unloading at Tampa's harbor, and was rich enough to put his fantasies of creating the world's most luxurious hotel into practice. But lack of care for the fittings and Plant's death in 1899 hastened its transformation from the last word in comfort to a pile of crumbling plaster. The city bought it in 1905 and leased it to Tampa University 23 years later; today, in one wing, the Henry B. Plant Museum , 401 W Kennedy Blvd (Tues-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun noon-4pm; $5), holds what's left of the hotel's furnishings.

The splendid Florida Aquarium , 701 Channelside Drive, in Tampa's dockland area (daily 9.30am-5pm; $13.75, tel 813/273-4000, ), houses lavish displays of Florida's fresh- and saltwater habitats, from springs and swamps to beaches and coral reefs. Residents include an impressive variety of fish and birds, otters, turtles and alligators.

Downtown Tampa

• Downtown Tampa

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