Henry B. Plant Museum

The building is the first thing that stops you: a vast 1891 resort hotel in Moorish Revival style, its silver minarets and horseshoe arches rising above the palms on the bank of the Hillsborough River. Railroad magnate Henry Plant built it to lure wealthy northerners to a Florida almost nobody visited.

Inside, a series of rooms have been restored and furnished with the original pieces the Plants bought across Europe and Asia for the hotel — mirrors, cabinets, statuary and furniture assembled with more enthusiasm than restraint, which is precisely what makes them so revealing about the Gilded Age.

The exhibits also cover the hotel's brief moment on the world stage, when Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders staged nearby during the Spanish-American War, and Tampa's growth into a cigar and tourist city. In December the rooms are dressed for a Victorian Christmas.