The Palace of Fine Arts is San Francisco's most dramatic
piece of architecture. Despite the name is not an art museum or a palace for
that matter but rather a Classical style ruin at the edge of a beautiful
lagoon. It was designed by the Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck for the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 and built with the intention
to last until the end of the exhibition. When the buildings of the fair were
torn down, citizens lobbied to spare the Palace of Fine Arts. And spared it
was but by early 1960s the building which was made from such materials as
wood, plaster and burlap started to crumble and became a ruin in the true
sense of the word. Finally, the money for reconstruction was found and in
1962 the building was rebuilt using reinforced concrete. The lagoon is the
perfect spot for an afternoon walk, watching the swans gliding on the lake in
front of the rotunda.
