The city has a total area of 175.3 square miles (453.9 km²), including 113.4 square miles (293.7 km²) of land and 61.8 square miles (160.1 km²) (35.3%) of water.

The Cuban Club, built in 1917 as a gathering place for Cuban immigrants, is said to have hundreds of ghosts, including a boy who drowned in a pool once located in the basement, an actor who died by suicide on the club's stage, a member of the board of directors who was shot and killed inside the club, and a woman in a white gown and red shoes who was pushed from a balcony when she refused to dance with a man.

The Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa was founded in the 1880s by cigar manufacturer Vicente Martinez-Ybor and populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain, and Italy. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City's cigar factories rolled hundreds of millions of cigars annually until the Great Depression, when a drop in demand for fine cigars crushed the industry.

The Florida Aquarium is a 250,000 sq ft (23,000 m²) aquarium in the Channel District. It hosts over 20,000 species of aquatic plants and animals.

The lowest temperature ever recorded in Tampa's humid subtropical climate was 18 °F (-8 °C) on December 13, 1962, and the only snowfall ever recorded in Tampa occurred on January 19, 1977, with local accumulations maxing out at 0.2 inches (0.5 cm).

Tampa Riverwalk is a 2.6-mile-long (4.2 km) open space and pedestrian trail development along the Hillsborough River. The Riverwalk extends along most of the downtown Tampa waterfront, forming a continuous path connecting multiple parks, attractions, public spaces, and hotels.

The highest point in the city is only 48 feet (15 m) above sea level.

Fort Brooke was established in 1824, soon after Florida was acquired by the United States from Spain. It would serve as a major outpost on Florida's west coast during all three Seminole Indian Wars, and the small Civil War Battle of Fort Brooke was fought nearby in October 1863. Except for two cannons displayed on the University of Tampa, all traces of the fort are gone.