Palace of Fine Arts
Interesting facts
- It is the only structure from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition still standing on its original site.
- Maybeck's specific model was Piranesi's etching of the Temple of Minerva Medica in Rome, a ruined late-antique hall.
- The planter boxes atop the colonnade were meant to hold small trees and trailing vines, but they were never planted to save money.
- Philanthropist Walter S. Johnson pledged 2 million dollars in 1959 and ultimately gave about 4.5 million of the roughly 7.6 million rebuilding cost.
- The curving pergola around the rotunda stretches for about 340 metres, framing the lagoon on one side.
- The exhibition hall behind the rotunda is one of the largest single-storey buildings in San Francisco.
- On 6 October 1976 the palace hosted the second presidential debate between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
- A 966-seat theatre was built inside the complex and opened in 1970.
- Local sculptor Spero Anargyros recreated many of the larger sculptures when the palace was rebuilt in concrete.
Why it is worth it
The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco was meant to look like a ruin from the start. Bernard Maybeck designed it for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 as a quiet place between the crowded fairgrounds and the art galleries, and he took his cue from an etching by Piranesi of a ruined Roman temple and from Arnold Böcklin's painting Isle of the Dead. The result is an open rotunda about 50 metres high, set beside a lagoon and flanked by a long curving colonnade, crowned by sculptures of weeping women.
The exposition's palaces were built to be demolished, framed in wood and finished in staff, a mix of plaster and fibre. Almost all of them came down; this one was so loved that a preservation league, led by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, formed while the fair was still running. The flimsy materials crumbled all the same, and by the 1950s the imitation ruin had become a real one. In 1964 everything but the steel frame of the exhibition hall was torn down, and the palace was rebuilt in permanent concrete by 1974, with all its sculpture recast. A restoration and seismic retrofit of the dome, colonnades and lagoon was completed around 2010.
Look for the details: three repeating panels by Bruno Zimm around the rotunda's entablature, on the theme of the struggle for the beautiful; Ulric Ellerhusen's weeping figures and allegories of Contemplation, Wonderment and Meditation; the eight panels under the dome that once held Robert Reid's murals of the birth of Art and California's four golds — poppies, citrus, metal and wheat. The lagoon, with its reflections of the dome, is the point: it was planned as a mirror, as in European classical gardens. Hitchcock filmed Vertigo here, and the exhibition hall behind the rotunda, home to the Exploratorium until 2013, now hosts events.
Getting there
The palace stands in the Marina District of San Francisco, about 4 km from downtown. San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is about 21 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Golden Gate Bridge 3.3 km · bridge
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Palace of Fine Arts is a monumental structure located in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, United States, originally built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition to exhibit works of art. It is the only structure from the exposition that survives on site, though it was completely rebuilt from 1964 to 1974.
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