Where to Stay in San Diego

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Art on the Border

Balboa Park is San Diego's greatest cultural asset, a thousand-acre urban park whose Spanish Colonial Revival buildings house the San Diego Museum of Art, the Timken Museum of Art (with free admission and an outstanding collection of Old Masters), the Museum of Photographic Arts, the San Diego Natural History Museum, and numerous other institutions. The concentration of quality within Balboa Park is extraordinary and makes a sustained art visit to San Diego genuinely rewarding. Beyond the park, the Barrio Logan neighborhood, just south of downtown, is the heart of San Diego's Chicano arts community, anchored by Chicano Park, whose collection of murals painted on the concrete pillars of the Coronado Bridge constitutes one of the largest outdoor Chicano murals in the world. The North Park neighborhood supports a younger contemporary scene, while Little Italy has become a destination for design-oriented galleries and the monthly Art Walk festival. The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego operates two locations, one in downtown and one in La Jolla, presenting an ambitious program of international contemporary art.