The hook
A hotel keeper spent fifty-five years turning a small adobe boarding house into a full-block fantasia of towers, flying buttresses, and catacombs, and it's still a working hotel.
01Why it's worth it
Frank Miller took over a twelve-room adobe in Riverside in 1880 and kept building it until he died in 1935, never quite finished. What grew is the largest Mission Revival building in the country, and something stranger than that label suggests: an entire city block of arches, bell towers, spiral staircases that go nowhere, a five-story rotunda, a gothic wing, catacomb passages, and six thousand pieces of art and religious objects he hauled back from around the world. Presidents kept coming, from Taft and Roosevelt to Nixon and Kennedy, and Reagan honeymooned there. You can stay the night, eat inside it, or just wander the public spaces and get lost, which is really the point. In winter it disappears under a million lights for the Festival of Lights, gorgeous and completely mobbed.
02How to experience it
It's in downtown Riverside, about seven hours from the Bay. You don't have to be a guest to walk the lobby and courtyards, and a docent tour gets you into the odder corners. Go off-season if you want room to breathe; the Festival of Lights from late November is worth it, but bring patience for the crowds.