Explore Monterey

Monterey State Historic Park is a group of restored adobe and early American buildings in Old Monterey, the former capital of Spanish and Mexican Alta California. It includes the Custom House of 1827, where the US flag was raised over California in 1846, the Pacific House Museum and California's First Theatre. Guided walks start at the Custom House.

The Monterey Museum of Art, founded in 1959, shows California art from the 19th century to the present in eight galleries at 559 Pacific Street, across from Colton Hall in Old Monterey. Its collection covers painting, photography and sculpture, with a focus on early California painting and the artists of the Carmel art colony.

Colton Hall on Pacific Street in Monterey was built of local stone in 1847–49 by Walter Colton, the town's first American alcalde, with a school below and a public hall above. In 1849 the upstairs hall hosted California's first constitutional convention. It is now a city museum showing documents and objects from the convention.

Old Fisherman's Wharf is a pier in Monterey Harbor, built in 1870 by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company and owned by the city since 1913. It served as a wholesale fish market into the 1960s and is now lined with seafood restaurants and shops. Whale-watching and fishing boats leave from it, and sea lions often rest on the pilings nearby.

The Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo, also called the Royal Presidio Chapel, was built of local sandstone in 1791–94 as the chapel of Monterey's Spanish presidio. It is the oldest stone building in California and the only surviving structure of the original presidio. It still serves as a parish church and as the cathedral of the Diocese of Monterey.

Cannery Row is a waterfront street in Monterey that was once lined with more than 30 sardine canneries and reduction plants. Originally Ocean View Avenue, it was renamed in 1958 after John Steinbeck's 1945 novel Cannery Row. The last cannery closed in 1973; the surviving industrial buildings now hold shops, restaurants, hotels and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in 1984 on Cannery Row in Monterey, on the site of the former Hovden sardine cannery. Its exhibits focus on the habitats of Monterey Bay, including a living kelp forest, open-ocean tanks, jellyfish and sea otters. Outdoor decks look straight onto the bay and its rocky shore.

Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo stands at the mouth of the Carmel River on the southern edge of Carmel-by-the-Sea, about 7 km south of Monterey. Founded in 1770 and moved here in 1771, it was the headquarters of the Alta California missions under Junípero Serra. Restored from 1931, it keeps its original bell tower and houses museums.