Palace of Fine Arts
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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. It was the only building from the Exposition not to be demolished, and in the 1960s it was entirely rebuilt to ensure its longevity. The exhibition hall, which originally housed Impressionist paintings during the Exposition, is now home to the Exploratorium, a state of the art interactive science museum.
A single dome remains from the eight identical structures that were originally constructed. Towering collonaded walkways linked the buildings on the site, but only a few remain intact.
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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.
Other cities with buildings called "The Palace of Fine Arts" include Mexico City and Chicago.
The Palace of Fine Arts in the movies
The dome of the Palace of Fine Arts just outside the Exploratorium and the adjacent lagoon have often been used as backdrops for movies, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. One of the more recent sequences takes place in The Rock where FBI agent Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) finally catches up with John Mason (Sean Connery).
External links
- History of the Palace of Fine Arts (http://www.exploratorium.edu/history/palace/)
- Photos of the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts - Terra Galleria (http://www.terragalleria.com/california/california.sf-palace-fine-arts.html)