San Diego Attractions

At first glance you might think that the Spanish Colonial-style buildings in Balboa Park, a AAA GEM attraction, are remnants from the city's earliest days as a Franciscan mission and military fort, but the park's origins are far more recent. Originally called City Park, the 1,200-acre landscaped area was renamed in 1910 after a contest. Since it offered views of the Pacific, and since Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to see Earth's largest ocean, the choice seemed natural.

Many of the buildings were constructed for the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition including the California Building, which you can't miss thanks to its 200-foot-high bell tower and multihued tile dome. This churchlike building has housed anthropology exhibits since the exposition's 1915 opening, but today the museum inside is called the San Diego Museum of Man and focuses on peoples of the western Americas.

Several museums line El Prado, Balboa Park's central pedestrian thoroughfare, and the connecting Plaza de Panama. Among these are the Mingei International Museum, an international folk art museum housed in the reconstructed mission-style House of Charm, and the San Diego Museum of Art, which contains the works of European old masters, 19th- and 20th-century American art and a comprehensive Asian collection behind its richly detailed façade--a facade complete with caravels, cherubs and busts of famous artists sculpted in relief.

Continuing to the eastern end of El Prado will bring you to two noteworthy science museums. The San Diego Natural History Museum is housed in a stately white building constructed in 1933 and expanded dramatically in 2001. In addition to the fossils and living specimens that you'd expect, the museum also has a 300-seat, giant-screen theater and hosts all sorts of changing exhibitions covering topics ranging from the human genome to the Dead Sea Scrolls to chocolate.

Facing the natural history museum on the opposite side of a plaza with a circular fountain is the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, where the theme shifts to science, technology and most importantly, child-friendly "edutainment." The center's interactive, hands-on exhibits--along with motion simulator rides and the world's first IMAX Dome Theater--are designed to engage visitors, particularly younger ones.

The list of Balboa Park's attractions is a long one and includes the Botanical Building, Japanese Friendship Garden, Marston House, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Air & Space Museum, San Diego Automotive Museum, San Diego Hall of Champions Sports Museum, San Diego Historical Society Museum and Research Archives, San Diego Model Railroad Museum, Spanish Village Art Center, Spreckels Organ Pavilion Timken Museum.