Today when I went to the Palace of Fine Arts, I imagined I had just stepped from modern-day San Francisco to ancient Rome or Greece.

It was built for the world fair to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal in 1915. It was built also to show the world that San Francisco had recovered from the great 1906 fire that had nearly eaten the whole San Francisco.

The Palace of Fine Arts was built around a small artificial lagoon. It is made of a wide, 1,100 foot pergola, an arch formed by rows of columns framing a wide walkway, around a central rotunda, by the water. In the background behind the colonnades, were art galleries with 113 rooms, exhibiting art. Now it is the famous hands-on-science museum, The Exploratorium. The center of the arch was placed behind the rotunda. This let a wider arch to be built in the same space, giving it a grander appearance. It was 1st made of plaster and burlap fiber.
Bernard Maybeck, the architect, built it based on ancient Roman and Greek buildings. It was built in the Marina District, on land that had once belonged to the Spanish Presidio. Maybeck had designed his building to be temporary. He believed that every great city had to have ruins. Luckily, when he had already demolished 7 of the 8 domes, the public saved the last dome. He also made space for a lagoon because the water would reflect the grandness of his building.

In 1967, the dome and the rest of the building were rebuilt of concrete to reinforce it. In 1997, the lagoon needed repairs. It was surrounded by an ugly chain-link fence. The turtles, ducks, and swans were taken out to repair the lagoon.
On November 2006, the lagoon reopened to the public.

The Palace of Fine Arts has an amazing history. I hope I can visit it again with my family.