Santa Barbara
California's Riviera — where the mountains meet the sea in Spanish Colonial white and the light is consistently, deliberately beautiful.
"Santa Barbara is the version of California that California tries to be everywhere and only manages here. The city legislated its own aesthetic in the 1920s and has enforced it ever since. The result is unified, coherent, and very beautiful."
— Personal notesSpanish Colonial Revival and why it works
After the 1925 earthquake destroyed much of downtown Santa Barbara, the city made an extraordinary civic decision: it would rebuild in a unified Spanish Colonial Revival style. White stucco walls, red tile roofs, arched colonnades, and terracotta details — every building on State Street follows these rules, and the result is an urban coherence that most American cities would envy. The Santa Barbara County Courthouse, in particular, is one of the finest public buildings in California: its clock tower and sunken gardens are the kind of civic architecture that makes you believe in civic life.
Mission Santa Barbara, on a hill above the city, has been continuously occupied since 1786 and is among the most photogenic of the California missions. The rose garden in front, the twin bell towers, the mountain backdrop — it is the image of California that artists have been painting for two centuries.
Wineries and murals between the tracks and the sea
The Funk Zone is the neighbourhood between the train tracks and the harbour — formerly an industrial area, now one of the most engaging few blocks of casual eating, drinking, and looking in Southern California. Urban wineries pour Santa Ynez Valley wines in converted warehouses alongside murals commissioned from artists who have made the neighbourhood their own. It is the kind of place that happens gradually and then suddenly is the best thing about a city.
The Saturday farmers' market on State Street is where Santa Barbara takes its own food supply seriously — organic produce from the nearby valleys, fresh seafood from the harbour boats, and the pastries that justify the entire trip. The Central Coast grows things with an intensity that comes from the combination of Pacific fog and 300 days of sun, and the farmers' market is the most direct way to experience this.
"Every city makes claims about its lifestyle. Santa Barbara's claims are unusually well-substantiated — by the mountains, the ocean, the tiles, and a farmers' market that makes everything else seem like an approximation."