gave it a commanding position, at the extreme west of the group of
exhibit palaces. The architect, Bernard. R. Maybeck of San Francisco,
found as an asset on beginning his work, a small natural lake and a
fine group of Monterey cypress. With this foundation he has created a
temple of supreme loveliness, thoroughly original in conception, yet
classic in its elemental simplicity and in its appeal to the highest and
noblest traditions of beauty and art, revealing the imagination of a
poet, the fine sense of color and harmony of an artist, and the sure
hand of a master-architect in his confident control of architectural
forms, of decorative detail and of the contributing landscape elements.
The conception of the rotunda is said to have been suggested to the
architect by Becklin's painting "The Island of the Dead" and that of the
peristyle by Gerome's "Chariot Race."

Across the Laguna from the Palace of Fine Arts runs Administration
Avenue and the magnificent Roman wall which forms the western facade of
the main group of palaces.



Palace of Fine Arts
The Rotunda and Peristyle

The Palace of Fine Arts is, in reality, not one complete building, but
four separate and distinct elements. The rotunda, an octagonal
structure, forms the center of the composition. On either side is a
detached peristyle which follows the curve of the gallery itself, as it
describes an arc about the western shore of the Laguna, yet so
successfully are they all bound together by the encircling green wall
and by the other landscape elements, that an impression of satisfying