Must-see attractions in Monterey

Monterey is practically synonymous with its world-class aquarium overlooking Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which protects dense kelp forests and…

Find out what's currently open at Monterey State Historic Park, grab a free map and buy tickets for guided walking tours inside this 1847 adobe building,…

Old Monterey is home to an extraordinary assemblage of 19th-century brick and adobe buildings administered as a state park and linked by a 2-mile self…

Downtown, MMA Pacific Street is particularly strong in California contemporary art and modern landscape painters and photographers, including Ansel Adams…

Built of sandstone in 1794, this graceful chapel is California’s oldest continuously functioning parish and first stone building. The original 1770…

Escaping WWII in Europe, Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí lived and worked in the Monterey and Carmel area in the 1940s. Comprising over 300 Dalí…

Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson came to Monterey in 1879 to court his wife-to-be, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. This building, then the French Hotel…

John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row immortalized the sardine-canning business that was Monterey’s lifeblood for the first half of the 20th century. A…

In 1822, a newly independent Mexico ended the Spanish trade monopoly and stipulated that any traders bringing goods to Alta (Upper) California must first…

This stately early-19th-century adobe home was built by John Rogers Cooper, a New England sea captain, and three generations of his family resided here…

Southeast of downtown Monterey, MMA La Mirada is a silent-film star’s villa, a building whose humble adobe origins are exquisitely concealed. It is now…

The trio of tiny original one-room cabins where cannery workers shacked up provides a sobering reminder of the hard lives led by Filipino, Japanese,…

Peek inside brick Colton Hall, where California’s first constitutional convention took place in 1849. Once the capitol of Alta (Upper) California, today…

On the grounds of the original Spanish fort, this specialized museum (of interest only to history buffs) looks at Monterey’s history from a military…

Downtown, the MMA Pacific Street is particularly strong in California contemporary art and modern landscape painters and photographers, including Ansel…

Featured in John Steinbeck’s novel Tortilla Flat, this small granite prison was built in 1856. Over a century of use, not one prisoner ever escaped.

Originally built as a lodging house and tavern in 1847, and used as a theater from 1850, this building is currently closed for renovation.

Along Cannery Row, stop at Steinbeck Plaza to soak up bay views and snap a photo of yourself with a bronze bust of the famous writer.

Open to the public, this fine adobe structure was originally built in 1847 by Scottish settler, David Wight.