The Palace of Fine Arts was built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world's fair celebrating the Panama Canal. Bernard Maybeck designed it, inspired by a Roman-ruin engraving.
It was meant to be temporary. It was built of plaster-fiber over wood and was not supposed to outlast the fair.
People loved it, but it decayed and closed in 1952. It was rebuilt in concrete, with groundbreaking in 1964 and completion in 1967. The open-air rotunda is an octagon topped with a dome about 162 feet across.