The Huntington Library

A Gutenberg Bible, The Blue Boy and 130 acres of gardens sit within the same visit, which is what makes The Huntington feel so unusually rich. Its library holds roughly 12 million items, including about 9.2 million manuscripts and 437,000 rare books; among them are one of 12 surviving vellum Gutenberg Bibles and the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

The art collection is just as serious, with nearly 50,000 works, but the painting people tend to seek out first is Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy. Henry and Arabella Huntington acquired it in 1921, and seeing it in the Huntington Art Gallery gives the campus a sharp focal point rather than the feel of a general museum complex.

Then the place opens out. The Botanical Gardens cover about 130 acres, arranged into roughly 16 themed gardens, including the more than 15-acre classical Chinese Garden, Liu Fang Yuan. The Japanese Garden, Desert Garden and Rose Garden turn the visit into a walk between books, paintings and landscapes.