Palm Springs looks a little like someone dreamed up the perfect mid-century vacation town and then placed it beneath a wall of mountains in the California desert. Tall palms line streets filled with low-slung modernist buildings, swimming pools shimmer behind privacy walls, vintage signs survive beside stylish hotels, and the San Jacinto Mountains rise so abruptly from the valley that they seem almost theatrical.
That combination has made Palm Springs far more than a warm-weather resort. It is one of the great destinations for anyone interested in mid-century design, Desert Modernism, old Hollywood, art, roadside architecture, desert landscapes, and the optimistic visual culture that flourished in Southern California during the middle of the 20th century.
Yet Palm Springs also has a history stretching back far beyond the modern resort city. The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has called this area home since time immemorial, and its history and continuing presence are essential to understanding the landscape visitors experience today.
Whether you are coming for architecture, hiking, museums, vintage style, or simply an afternoon beneath the palm trees, here are some of the best things to do in Palm Springs.
ðĄ Explore Palm Springs’ Mid-Century Modern Architecture
If there is one visual style inseparable from Palm Springs, it is mid-century modernism. During the decades following World War II, architects including Albert Frey, E. Stewart Williams, Donald Wexler, William Krisel, Hugh Kaptur, and Richard Neutra helped turn the desert into an extraordinary laboratory for modern architecture.
The climate encouraged architects to rethink the relationship between indoors and outdoors. Large expanses of glass framed mountain views, deep overhangs provided shade, swimming pools became extensions of living spaces, and flat or dramatically angled roofs emphasized the horizontal desert landscape. Breezeblocks, exposed structural materials, clerestory windows, colorful doors, and carefully planned desert landscaping completed a style that was modern without feeling disconnected from its surroundings.
You do not have to enter a famous house to appreciate the architecture. Simply driving or walking through neighborhoods such as Twin Palms, Vista Las Palmas, Deepwell Estates, and the Movie Colony can become an architectural tour. Remember that these are residential neighborhoods, so admire homes from public streets and respect the privacy of the people who live there.
Architecture fans visiting at the right time of year can go considerably deeper. Modernism Week brings architecture tours, talks, exhibitions, parties, and opportunities to see buildings that are not normally open to the public.
ðī Discover Albert Frey’s Palm Springs
Few architects are as closely associated with Palm Springs as Albert Frey. Born in Switzerland and trained in European modernism, Frey eventually made the California desert his home and spent decades adapting modern architecture to its unusual landscape.
His influence is scattered across the city. One of the easiest places to encounter it is before you have technically begun sightseeing: the former Tramway Gas Station, with its enormous soaring roof, now serves as the Palm Springs Visitor Center.
It is the sort of building that demonstrates exactly why Palm Springs is so much fun for architecture enthusiasts. Even an old gas station can look as though it belongs in a vision of the future.
Frey’s buildings are an ideal introduction to Desert Modernism because they reveal that the style was never merely about fashionable furniture and swimming pools. At its best, Palm Springs modernism was about designing in response to intense sunlight, heat, dramatic terrain, mountain views, and the peculiar beauty of the desert.
ðïļ Visit the Architecture and Design Center
Anyone fascinated by the city’s buildings should also visit the Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center. The center itself is part of the experience, occupying a glass-and-steel former Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan building designed by E. Stewart Williams in 1961.
Rather than disguising the building’s original identity, its restoration retained features such as the terrazzo floor, aluminum screens, expansive glazing, and even the old bank vault, which has been incorporated into the museum store.
Exhibitions focus on architecture and design, while the collection includes archival material connected with architects and designers including Albert Frey, E. Stewart Williams, Hugh Kaptur, and Arthur Elrod.
It is a relatively compact stop, but for Comet Atomic readers it may be one of the most interesting places in the city. Here Palm Springs’ familiar imagery of glass houses, geometric furniture, desert landscaping, and modern materials becomes part of a much larger story about 20th-century design.
ðĻ Spend a Few Hours at the Palm Springs Art Museum
The Palm Springs Art Museum gives the city another important cultural anchor. Its collections and exhibitions encompass modern and contemporary art, photography, sculpture, architecture and design, and art of the Western Americas.
The museum is particularly well suited to Palm Springs because art and architecture are so intertwined with the city’s identity. The museum building itself was designed by E. Stewart Williams, adding another significant piece of modern architecture to a visit.
It also offers a welcome indoor break during the hottest part of a desert afternoon.
When you leave, spend some time walking through the surrounding downtown streets rather than immediately getting back into the car. Palm Springs has public art, galleries, modernist civic buildings, vintage details, and hundreds of names honored along the city’s Walk of Stars.
ðĄ Ride the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
One of the most dramatic things about Palm Springs is how quickly the landscape can change. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway carries visitors more than two and a half miles through Chino Canyon to Mountain Station at an elevation of more than 8,500 feet.
The rotating tram cars slowly turn during the ride, giving passengers changing views as they climb away from the desert floor.
At the top, the palms and arid landscape have been replaced by the forests of Mount San Jacinto State Park. Observation areas provide expansive views over the Coachella Valley, while hiking trails lead into the surrounding mountains.
Because temperatures can be dramatically cooler at the top, bringing another layer of clothing is sensible even when Palm Springs itself feels hot.
There are few places where you can spend the morning surrounded by cactus, ride a tram into an alpine forest, and return to a palm-lined desert boulevard for dinner. That abrupt transition is one of the most memorable experiences in Palm Springs.
ðĨū Hike Through Indian Canyons
Palm Springs’ history did not begin with Hollywood celebrities or modernist architects. The Indian Canyons are part of the ancestral homeland of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, whose people have lived in this region for thousands of years.
Palm, Andreas, and Murray canyons contain trails, streams, rock formations, native plants, archaeological features, and remarkable stands of California fan palms. Palm Canyon alone contains an extraordinary ribbon of green running through the rugged desert landscape.
This is an especially good place to see how misleading the word “desert” can be. The landscape is not empty. Water, plants, wildlife, geology, and human history have interacted here for millennia.
Desert heat can become dangerous surprisingly quickly, so carry plenty of water, stay on designated trails, and schedule longer hikes for cooler parts of the day.
ðĶ Walk to Tahquitz Falls
Tahquitz Canyon provides another opportunity to explore Agua Caliente land and history close to downtown Palm Springs.
The canyon contains a roughly two-mile round-trip trail leading to a seasonal 60-foot waterfall, with rock formations, native vegetation, wildlife, and traces of the area’s long human history along the way.
The visitor center adds cultural context before the hike, and interpretive programs may also be available depending on the season.
As with Indian Canyons, visitors should take desert conditions seriously. Bring plenty of water, wear appropriate footwear, and consider hiking earlier in the day when temperatures are high.
Seeing these canyons also changes the way Palm Springs looks when you return downtown. The mountains and palms stop being merely a scenic backdrop and become part of a much older cultural landscape.
ðŠķ Visit the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
For a deeper understanding of that history, spend time at the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum in downtown Palm Springs.
The museum explores the history, culture, ancestral lands, traditions, and continuing story of the Agua Caliente people through exhibits, objects, multimedia presentations, and immersive displays.
The surrounding Oasis Trail uses native plants, rocks, and water features inspired by landscapes within the Tribe’s ancestral canyons, connecting the museum experience with the geography outside.
For travelers who arrive in Palm Springs primarily because of its Hollywood history or mid-century architecture, the museum adds essential perspective. The familiar resort city developed within a landscape that already carried thousands of years of human history.
ðĩ Wander Through the Moorten Botanical Garden
Palm Springs has turned desert landscaping into an art form, and one of the best places to appreciate it is the Moorten Botanical Garden.
Established in 1938, this privately owned garden contains thousands of desert plants gathered from arid regions around the world.
Its most famous feature is the Cactarium, a greenhouse filled with unusual cactus and other desert specimens. Elsewhere, pathways wind among enormous cacti, succulents, palms, rocks, fossils, and desert curiosities, giving the property the atmosphere of an old Palm Springs roadside attraction crossed with a botanical collection.
It does not require hours to explore, which makes it an easy addition to a day devoted to architecture or downtown sightseeing. It also helps explain why landscaping matters so much to the appearance of Palm Springs. Here, plants are part of the city’s architectural vocabulary.
ðïļ Walk Downtown Palm Springs
Palm Canyon Drive is the social spine of downtown Palm Springs, and sometimes one of the best things to do is simply walk it.
Restaurants, galleries, shops, vintage-inspired storefronts, public art, palms, historic buildings, and modern architecture create a streetscape that feels unmistakably Californian.
Thursday evenings bring VillageFest, when part of Palm Canyon Drive becomes a pedestrian street fair filled with vendors, food, arts and crafts, and entertainment.
It is an easy way to experience the city after dark, when temperatures fall and Palm Springs’ neon, illuminated signs, restaurants, and storefronts begin to take on an entirely different personality.
Keep looking upward and across the street as you walk. In Palm Springs, an unusual roofline, breezeblock wall, old sign, bank building, motel, or former service station can be as interesting as whatever destination you were originally heading toward.
ðŽ Look for Traces of Old Hollywood
Long before Palm Springs became an international destination for Modernism enthusiasts, Hollywood helped establish its glamorous reputation.
Its proximity to Los Angeles made the desert an appealing retreat for actors, musicians, producers, and other entertainers, and neighborhoods around the city remain associated with stars including Frank Sinatra and many of his contemporaries.
That history survives in houses, hotels, restaurants, neighborhood names, and local stories. Architecture tours frequently combine celebrity history with design, which makes sense because the two subjects overlap constantly in Palm Springs.
The houses built for wealthy entertainers became showcases for the informal indoor-outdoor lifestyle that helped define the city’s image.
There is no need to turn the experience into a hunt for celebrity homes. The more interesting story is how entertainment, tourism, architecture, automobiles, resort culture, and Southern California’s postwar growth came together in one relatively small desert city.
ðŠ Visit During Modernism Week
For a Comet Atomic reader, Modernism Week may be the ultimate time to visit Palm Springs.
The annual celebration brings together architecture tours, exhibitions, talks, vintage culture, design events, home tours, parties, and other programs devoted to modernism and its preservation.
The festival also demonstrates how seriously Palm Springs now treats its architectural inheritance. Buildings that might once have been dismissed as simply outdated have become recognized as part of an important cultural landscape.
Preservation has helped transform the city’s mid-century architecture into one of its defining attractions.
Even if your trip does not coincide with Modernism Week, Palm Springs remains an open-air lesson in modernism throughout the year.
ð Experience Palm Springs After Dark
When the sun drops behind the San Jacinto Mountains, Palm Springs changes character.
The harsh desert light softens, patios fill, illuminated signs begin to glow, and the warm evening air makes walking considerably more pleasant.
This is a good time to return downtown, have dinner, browse shops and galleries, or simply drive through the city and look at its architecture under evening light.
The combination of vintage buildings, palms, pools, old Hollywood atmosphere, mountain silhouettes, and neon is about as close as you can come to stepping into a mid-century California postcard.
Palm Springs is especially enjoyable when you resist the urge to rush from attraction to attraction. Much of its appeal lies in simply looking around.
âïļ Why Palm Springs Belongs in the Comet Atomic Universe
Palm Springs sits at an unusual intersection of nearly everything that makes mid-century culture fascinating.
Modern architecture stands beside old roadside design. Hollywood glamour overlaps with desert landscapes. Glass houses and swimming pools reflect the postwar ideal of informal California living, while surviving buildings reveal experiments with new materials, technologies, and ideas about how people might live in a modern world.
Yet the city is more interesting when its story extends beyond that glamorous mid-century image. The Agua Caliente people, the desert environment, the mountains, the native palm oases, the artists, architects, residents, preservationists, and generations of visitors have all contributed to the Palm Springs of today.
Come for the butterfly roofs, breezeblocks, vintage signs, and impossibly tall palms. Ride a rotating tram car into the mountains. Wander among cactus. Explore modern art. Hike into an oasis. Spend an evening beneath neon and stars.
Palm Springs has mastered the rare trick of making the past feel strangely futuristic.
ð Related Articles
- Albert Frey: A Master of Desert Modernism
- Mid-Century Culture: Design, Style & Everyday Life From the Atomic Age
- The Unique Charm of Dingbat Apartments
- Futuristic Beauty: Exploring the Chemosphere House by Architect John Lautner
- Exploring the Iconic Googie Architecture of Bob’s Big Boy Restaurant
- Art & Design: Modern Art, Mid-Century Design & Creative Culture
ð Sources & Further Reading
- Visit Palm Springs â Things to Do Guide
- Visit Palm Springs â Architecture & Midcentury Modern Design
- Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
- Palm Springs Art Museum
- Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
- Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians â Cultural Tourism
- Indian Canyons
- Tahquitz Canyon
- Moorten Botanical Garden
- Modernism Week
