Palace of Fine Arts Rotunda and Maybeck Colonnade: The Roman Rebirth

Why is it significant?

Step beneath the colossal archways of the Palace of Fine Arts rotunda and look up into the cavernous, coffered dome rising one hundred sixty-two feet above your head. Built to house fine art from across the globe during the 1915 exposition, the palace was never intended to be permanent.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step beneath the colossal archways of the Palace of Fine Arts rotunda and look up into the cavernous, coffered dome rising one hundred sixty-two feet above your head. Built to house fine art from across the globe during the 1915 exposition, the palace was never intended to be permanent. Like all fair buildings, it was constructed of a temporary mixture of plaster, burlap fiber, and staff over a light timber and steel frame, designed to crumble gracefully after the fair closed its gates.

However, San Franciscans fell so deeply in love with Maybeck's romantic monument that they refused to let it be destroyed. For fifty years, the decaying plaster structure weathered into a genuine romantic ruin, its statues crumbling in the coastal fog. Finally, in the 1960s, philanthropist Walter S. Johnson contributed millions of dollars, matched by municipal bond funds, to completely demolish and painstakingly reconstruct the rotunda, colonnade, and friezes in permanent reinforced concrete, preserving Maybeck's vision for future centuries.

Look up at the top of the colonnade pillars to see the enigmatic classical figures sculpted by Ulric Ellerhusen. Notice how the sculpted weeping women turn their backs to the viewers below, draping their robes over funeral urns. Ellerhusen designed these maidens to represent 'contemplation of the arts', expressing sorrow at the impermanence of human artistic endeavor. Every surrounding viewpoint, weathered stone wall, and historic pathway tells an essential chapter of California's transformation from a remote frontier outpost into a world-renowned Pacific metropolis. Every surrounding viewpoint, weathered stone wall, and historic pathway tells an essential chapter of California's transformation from a remote frontier outpost into a world-renowned Pacific metropolis.

Between 1969 and 2013, the cavernous exhibition hall behind the colonnade housed the Exploratorium, the revolutionary hands-on science museum founded by physicist Frank Oppenheimer.

Exit the rotunda grounds onto Lyon Street and walk north to Marina Boulevard, following the path into the Presidio at Mason Street.