Sunrise over the palace lagoon

After the  the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco was anxious to show the world that it had risen from the ashes. So in 1915 it hosted the Panama Pacific International Exposition.
Built on 635 acres reclaimed from San Francisco Bay, the Palace of Fine Arts ( EXTRA) exposition featured 11 great exhibit palaces showcased along beautiful lagoons. The Palace of Fine Arts was the work of California architect Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck’s fantastic creation, inspired by a Piranesi engraving, featured a Roman ruin reflected in a pool. 
According to Maybeck, this ruin existed  to show “the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes.”  By the time the exposition closed nine months later,  18 million people — about 20 times the population of San Francisco  —  visited the exposition.