Palace of Fine Arts

Maybeck designed the Palace to look like a Roman ruin, for a fair meant to last a single year, and built it of wood framing covered in staff, a mix of plaster and fiber. By the 1950s the imitation ruin had become a real one. In 1964 everything but the steel of the exhibit hall was demolished, and by 1974 it had been rebuilt in poured concrete, every sculpture and ornament made anew. What the bronze calls the finest structure of 1915 is a replica of it. The murals inside the dome were never replaced.

What the plaque says

Palace of Fine Arts The Palace of Fine Arts was hailed as the finest structure built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE). It was designed by Bernard Maybeck, one of America's most important and influential architects. The Palace established a new standard for civic design by showing what critics have proclaimed as "the perfect marriage between architecture and landscape" and demonstrating how nature could serve as a vital design element. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 1064 Plaque placed by California State Parks, the Maybeck Foundation, and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muir Beach Overlook — 8.6 mi
  A cliff edge on Highway 1, and the concrete dugouts where two-man crews watched the sea after Pearl Harbor.
• Muir Woods National Monument — 9.1 mi
  A redwood canyon saved from a reservoir by a gift, and named for a man who had been there once.
• Earthquake Trail — 25 mi
  A short loop along the San Andreas, where a broken fence shows how far Point Reyes moved in under a minute in 1906.
• Kule Loklo — 26 mi
  A Coast Miwok village built in the 1970s to honour a people its builders were told had died out. They had not.

More markers nearby

• Presidio of San Francisco — 0.4 mi
• Site of Laurel Hill Cemetery — 1.1 mi
• Entrance of the San Carlos into San Francisco Bay — 1.4 mi
• Castillo de San Joaquín — 1.6 mi