California Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

About California Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

By the ULTIMATE California Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Drive the length of California and you travel through three centuries of architecture. Adobe missions gave the state its first buildings and, much later, its favourite style; a newspaper owner and a pioneering woman architect built a palace on a Big Sur hilltop; San Diego dressed a park for a world’s fair; and in the desert, mid-century architects invented a way of living with glass, sun and mountains. Here is the back story, region by region, and how to see it.

The missions

California’s oldest buildings are its 21 Spanish Franciscan missions. Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Río Carmelo, the Carmel Mission, was founded by Father Junípero Serra in 1771 as the second of them. When he died in 1784 he was laid to rest in the sanctuary of its adobe church, and the stone church that replaced it in 1797 was built to enclose his grave. The mission became a basilica in 1960 and is a National Historic Landmark; it is still a parish church within the Diocese of Monterey, with a museum and gardens to visit.

Down the coast, Old Mission Santa Barbara was founded on 4 December 1786 by Fray Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, the tenth of the missions. Known as the Queen of the Missions, it is the only one continuously occupied by Franciscan friars since its founding, and its present church, finished in 1820, is the fourth on the site. Take the tour of the museum and gardens, then look back at the mountains from the front steps.

California’s architecture tells its story in order: adobe, then Spanish revival, then glass and steel in the desert sun.

Hearst Castle

In 1919 the newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst asked the San Francisco architect Julia Morgan, the first woman licensed as an architect in California, for a small bungalow at his family’s campsite above San Simeon Bay. It grew into La Cuesta Encantada, a Mediterranean-style estate on which the two worked together for close to thirty years. Morgan designed the hilltop buildings, served as interior decorator and landscape architect, and even built the estate’s zoo, airport and barns, all while running her San Francisco practice.

Hearst left in 1947, with the estate still unfinished. The Hearst Corporation gave it to the State of California, together with its art collection, and it is now Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument. Visits are by guided tour only, so book ahead on the official website, and allow time for the drive along the Big Sur coast.

Santa Barbara and Balboa Park

After an earthquake in 1925, Santa Barbara rebuilt itself in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and its County Courthouse is the masterpiece. Finished in 1929 and dedicated that August, it was designed by William Mooser’s firm, with J. Wilmer Hershey’s sketches shaping the accepted design. Its 114-foot clock tower still keeps time with a 1929 Seth Thomas clock. Volunteer docents lead tours, and the tower’s observation deck looks over the red roofs to the sea.

In San Diego, City Park was renamed Balboa Park in 1910 ahead of the Panama-California Exposition of 1915. You still enter over the Cabrillo Bridge, the first cantilevered, multiple-arched bridge built in Southern California. Bertram Goodhue’s California Tower, inspired by Spanish-colonial churches in Mexico, still rises over El Prado, and the Botanical Building, built for the exposition, is one of the largest lath structures in the world. The Old Globe plays on three stages in the park, including the open-air Lowell Davies Festival Theatre.

Palm Springs modernism

In the desert, Palm Springs became the laboratory of mid-century modern design, from the Alexander Construction Company’s houses to the town’s banks, hotels and civic buildings. Most of the houses are private homes, so admire them from the street, or join a tour during Modernism Week, when many open their doors. Palm Springs Art Museum on Museum Drive, with its sculpture garden in Palm Desert, completes the visit.

Since 2017 the Coachella Valley has also hosted Desert X, a recurring exhibition of large-scale art across the desert, with five editions there so far. Its next edition, curated by the artistic director Neville Wakefield with Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, marks the exhibition’s tenth anniversary.

San Francisco’s stages

In San Francisco, the War Memorial Opera House on Van Ness Avenue, which opened in 1932 with Puccini’s Tosca, is home to both San Francisco Opera, whose archive records performances going back to 1923, and San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays across the street in Davies Symphony Hall. SFMOMA and the California Academy of Sciences complete a city that deserves several days of its own.

What’s new (checked October 2026)

Desert X has moved its next Coachella Valley edition to the autumn: it runs from 30 October 2027 to 7 May 2028, with opening weekend from 28 to 31 October 2027. In San Francisco, SFMOMA unveiled Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10 across four floors in April 2026.

Cultural calendar

Modernism Week returns to Palm Springs from 11 to 21 February 2027, with tickets on sale from 1 November 2026, and its autumn edition runs from 14 to 17 October 2027. San Francisco Ballet’s season and the opera and symphony seasons fill the Civic Center through the winter. For exhibitions, check each museum’s own programme before you go.

How to see it

Our advice: take the coast road. Begin in San Francisco, stop at the Carmel Mission, spend a night near San Simeon for Hearst Castle, and slow down in Santa Barbara for the mission and the courthouse. Continue to Balboa Park in San Diego, then end in the desert at Palm Springs. Book tours direct with each site, and see our Arts & Culture page for every museum, stage and landmark we recommend.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with California Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story before you go.