California Palace of the Legion of Honor

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Built as a memorial to the Californians who died in World War I, and set in a wooded spot overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Palace of the Legion of Honor is San Francisco's most beautiful museum, its neo-classical façade and Beaux Arts interior virtually unchanged since it was completed in 1924. A cast of Rodin's The Thinker dominates the entrance; the French sculptor was the personal passion of Alma Spreckels, the museum's founder, and the collection of his work here is second only to that of the Musée Rodin in Paris. A glass pyramid acts as a skylight for galleries containing more than 87,000 works of art, spanning 4,000 years but with the emphasis on European painting and decorative art (El Greco, Rembrandt, Monet). An expanded garden level houses temporary exhibitions, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts and the Bowles Collection of porcelain.