ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Museums are where stories can come to life through either artifacts or illustrations.

What You Need To Know

  • The St. Petersburg Museum of History is starting trolley tours around the city on May 4

  • The tour will go to historic spots in St. Pete using trolleys from Star Trolley

  • The tours will happen twice a month to start, and will soon add tours of West St. Pete and the city's architecture

When people visit a museum like the St. Petersburg Museum of History, Rui Farias, the museum’s executive director, says there are things people had no idea were in the city, like items from ancient Egypt.

“A number of people who came here from everywhere else and brought everything with them, and along with one journey came an Egyptian mummy and an Egyptian sarcophagus,” Farias said.

According to Farias, something as unique as Egyptian artifacts perfectly encapsulates the intriguing history of his city.

“We’ve done a good job of telling different stories,” said Farias. “So, you don’t walk into an exhibit, and it’s a timeline, like, ‘This is when Juan arrived in Florida,’ so we have a lot of different stories to tell.”

That’s what he and others who work at the St. Petersburg Museum of History pride themselves on: helping people expand their knowledge about their surroundings.

“Every room you walk into, there’s something different and there’s something that you go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’” Farias said.

But now, Farias and the museum aren’t limiting that learning to the rooms inside their building.

Starting in May, the museum will be partnering with Star Trolley to do historic tours around downtown St. Pete.

The goal is to tell those intriguing stories in the places where they happened.

“I love watching the expressions on people,” Farias said, “especially the folks who’ve lived here all their lives. I mean, I’ve lived here my entire life, and I’m still uncovering stuff I look at and go, ‘I had no idea.’”

The tour beginning May 4 will be going to historic spots in downtown, like Al Lang Stadium, and Albert Whitted Field, which was built in the 1920s.

Showing these places and their history excites Farias because he loves sharing his knowledge about what’s around St. Pete, sometimes to a fault.

“I drive my wife and family crazy because, every time I’m like, ‘Hey, did you know?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, here we go again,’” Farias joked.

But, to Farias, there’s so many stories that surround his city and he can’t wait to hit the road and share them with the public.

Farias says they plan to start out doing two of these trolley tours a month.

In addition, the museum plans to add a haunted trolley tour along with tours exploring the west side of St. Pete, the city’s architecture and boat tours of the city.