Balboa Park, San Diego, Guia do visitante e o que fazer por perto

Balboa Park is San Diego's great urban cultural park, covering more than 1,000 acres just north-east of downtown. It holds the San Diego Zoo, around 15 museums, gardens and performance spaces, and its Spanish Colonial Revival buildings date from the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition.

The story behind it

The land was set aside as parkland in the nineteenth century and is named after the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa. Its look today comes mostly from the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-1916, a world's fair held to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. The buildings created for it used the Spanish Colonial Revival style, which was a fresh look in the United States at the time and went on to shape the architecture of much of Southern California.

Many of those exposition buildings were meant to be temporary, but San Diego kept them, and they became homes for museums and arts groups. The zoo grew up alongside the park, and today the whole area draws about 14 million visits a year, according to the route creators.

What to look for

• The Prado, the main pedestrian promenade, is lined with ornate Spanish Colonial Revival facades full of carved stonework, arches and decorative tilework.
• The Cabrillo Bridge is the grand western entrance over a canyon, and it frames a fine view of the California Tower rising above the park.
• The Botanical Building, a large lath-covered structure beside a reflecting pond, is one of the most photographed corners of the park.
• The Spreckels Organ Pavilion is an outdoor stage with a large pipe organ, and it shows how much the park was built for public gatherings.

Tips for your visit

• Walking through the park is free, but museums and the zoo have their own admission and hours, so check current opening hours before you choose what to enter.
• Allow at least a couple of hours just to stroll the Prado and gardens, and a full day if you plan to go inside a museum or the zoo.
• Go in the morning for softer light and fewer people on the main promenade, and wear comfortable shoes because the park is large and hilly in places.
• Downtown San Diego is close, so the park pairs easily with a walk through the city center on the same day.

See it on a quest

San Diego: The Animals Have Fled the Zoo. takes its zoo theme from the park's most famous resident. You reach the area on foot as one stop of a longer route, the app tells you about each place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle in what is right in front of you. One ticket covers the whole group.

Kid Quest: Solve the case of the lost senses in San Diego is built for families with young detectives. It leads you to the park as part of a walk through the area, tells you about each place along the way, and gives children a puzzle to solve on the spot. One ticket covers the whole group.