travel
Palace of Fine Arts
Palace of Fine Arts built in 1915 by Bernard Maybeck. Fire spinners perform at night. Good spot for sunset and walks.
The Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. Bernard Maybeck designed the rotunda and colonnades as temporary structures out of plaster and burlap. They were supposed to come down after the fair. Instead, the city kept them, and in the 1960s rebuilt the whole thing in poured concrete so it would last.
The palace sits in the Marina district at Baker and Bay Streets. A shallow lagoon wraps around the rotunda, and ducks and swans float across it most days. Wedding photographers are always working the colonnade. On any Saturday afternoon, you’ll see two or three bridal parties posing between the columns.
If you stand under the dome and clap, the echo bounces around the coffered ceiling for a full second. The acoustics are strange and satisfying. The whole structure is bigger than it looks in photos. The columns are over forty feet tall.
At night, people come out. Fire spinners show up regularly and spin torches in circles near the colonnade. The fire reflects off the lagoon and the underside of the dome. A small crowd usually gathers to watch.
[!TIP] Go around sunset. Fire spinners often show up at night near the colonnade.
Street parking along Baker and Lyon fills up fast on weekends. The 30 Stockton bus stops a few blocks south on Chestnut. Free and open all day. The Letterman Digital Arts Center lawn is right next door if you want to extend the visit. We usually go around sunset.