US Map / Cities / St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg Map

St. Petersburg fills the southern end of the Pinellas peninsula, with Tampa Bay on one side, the Gulf on the other, and long bridges doing the work a land route cannot.

Where is St. Petersburg?

St. Petersburg is on the west coast of Florida, about 20 miles southwest of Tampa across the water — and considerably further by road before the bay bridges were built. Orlando is roughly 105 miles northeast, Miami some 260 miles southeast, and Jacksonville about 200 miles north. The city occupies the tip of a peninsula, so its street grid ends at water on three sides.

St. Petersburg at a glance

St. Petersburg in Florida

St. Petersburg is the largest city in Pinellas County, though Clearwater to the north is the county seat — the Florida county map shows Pinellas as one of the smallest counties in the state by area and the most crowded. Together with Tampa it anchors the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, the largest on Florida's Gulf side. Florida's other top-100 cities — Jacksonville, Miami, Hialeah, Orlando, Port St. Lucie and Cape Coral — are spread around the peninsula's edges. The Florida state page covers the pattern.

Tampa Bay, the barrier islands and the Skyway

Tampa Bay is a drowned river valley, shallow and broad, and it splits the metro in two. Three long crossings tie the halves together: the Gandy and Howard Frankland bridges over Old Tampa Bay to Tampa, and the Sunshine Skyway carrying Interstate 275 four miles across the mouth of the bay to Manatee County. West of the city a chain of barrier islands — St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach — lies between the mainland and the Gulf coast, separated by a narrow intracoastal waterway. The whole peninsula is low: a few feet of elevation change decides which streets flood in a storm surge, and hurricanes pushing water up the bay are the region's main hazard.

Cities near St. Petersburg

Around the bay and the peninsula are Tampa, Orlando, Cape Coral, Jacksonville and Miami. Pinellas County alone holds close to a million people on a peninsula you can drive across in fifteen minutes; the South Atlantic division page sets Florida beside the states up the coast.