The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Henry E. Huntington, who made his fortune in Southern California railroads, founded the institution in 1919 with his wife Arabella and built its library, art collection, and botanical gardens on his San Marino estate; it opened to the public in 1928, the year after his death. The library's holdings, more than 7 million manuscripts and over 400,000 rare books, include one of only eleven surviving vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible and the medieval Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, alongside historical letters from Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

The roughly 120-acre gardens are almost as well known as the library, with a Desert Garden holding more than 5,000 species of succulents and cacti, a Chinese Garden described as the largest outside China itself, and a Japanese Garden that has drawn visitors for more than a century. Because the gardens require little English to enjoy and the art galleries include widely recognized works such as Gainsborough's The Blue Boy, a family can spend a full day here moving between reading rooms, galleries, and open-air garden paths.