Classical Roman Palace of Fine Arts

Have you heard about Palace of Fine Arts? During my tour to US last Oct 2007, the guide brought us to visit it. It’s very fresh and idyllic with its beautiful lagoon, fountain, birds and swans. The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California is a building originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. It was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Greek architecture.


A single dome remains from the eight identical structures that were originally constructed. Towering colonnaded walkways linked the buildings on the site, but only a few remain intact. The dome of the Palace of Fine Arts just outside the Exploratorium and the adjacent lagoon has often been used as backdrops for movies, even Indonesian movie (Eiffel, I’m in Love) used this place too when they took picture for meeting point of Tita (Shandy Aulia) and Adit (Samuel Rizal) in San Francisco.

The lagoon was intended to echo those found in classical settings in Europe, where the expanse of water provides a mirror surface to reflect the grand buildings and an undisturbed vista to appreciate them from a distance. In many places the edges are subsiding into the water, forming uneven and dangerous surfaces that are fenced off from the public and used by turtles to sun themselves. Australian eucalyptus trees fringe the eastern shores.

My friend and I ran to go to the other side of the lagoon to get a better picture, we had to rush, because we only got half an hour to enjoy the place. It’s a pity because the weather was very nice, unfortunately we had a very tight schedule. Of course we could not enter by the Exploratorium, the public science museum founded in 1969 by the physicist Dr. Frank Oppenheimer. It’s dedicated to teaching science through hands-on exhibits. Many of its exhibits are created by visual and performing artists as well as scientists and educators.

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon Street, San Francisco, CA 94123