The San Diego Museum of Art

On our list of the best activities in San Diego.

At the heart of Balboa Park's El Prado, the museum opened in 1926 as the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego and took its current name in 1978. It now holds more than 32,000 works spanning Spanish and Italian old masters, South Asian painting, and American work from the past two centuries, with a 2023 merger folding in the Museum of Photographic Arts' photography collection. Panama 66, a restaurant in the sculpture court, sits on site, and San Diego County residents get in free on the third Tuesday of each month.