Things to do in Sacramento

Landmark · Downtown, between 10th and 15th

An 1874 neoclassical capitol with a restored 19th-century museum wing inside, set in a forty-acre park planted as an arboretum of trees from around the world.

Local tip: The building is open to the public and free, and you can sit in the galleries when either house is in session — which is a genuinely interesting hour and something almost no resident has done. Capitol Park's trolley-era tree collection is labelled; the camellia grove in February is the local secret.

Culture · Riverfront, west end of downtown

Boardwalks and gold-rush-era buildings on the Sacramento River, with one of the largest railroad museums in the world — restored locomotives, a full-size roundhouse collection and the story of the transcontinental line that started here.

Local tip: The waterfront itself is touristy; the railroad museum is world-class and worth an afternoon even if you do not care about trains. Walk out onto the golden Tower Bridge at sunset and then eat in West Sacramento on the other side, which is where the newer restaurants have gone.

Neighborhood · East of downtown, roughly 16th to 29th

The city's densest and most walkable district — Victorian and craftsman houses on a numbered-and-lettered grid, with restaurants, bars, galleries and independent shops layered along the alphabet streets.

Local tip: Second Saturday is the monthly art walk and the single best way to meet people in your first month here. The Sunday farmers' market under the W-X freeway is one of the best in the country precisely because of what grows within an hour's drive.

Nature · Along the American River, downtown to Folsom Lake

Roughly 32 miles of riverside parkland with the paved Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail running its length, plus swimming holes, salmon runs, rafting put-ins and a genuinely wild stretch of river inside a city.

Local tip: Rafting from Sunrise to Sacramento Bar on a summer Saturday is the local rite of passage. For the rest of the year, the trail is the best cycling infrastructure in inland California — you can ride from downtown to Folsom Lake without meeting a car.

Culture · Downtown, near the river at 3rd and O

The oldest art museum in the American West, founded in 1885, in a restored Victorian mansion joined to a large modern pavilion — strong on California art and on Californian ceramics in particular.

Local tip: Pay-what-you-wish on the first Sunday of the month, and the Friday evening ArtMix events are a real social fixture rather than a museum-marketing exercise. The original Victorian ballroom upstairs is the thing to see.

Nature · South-west of the city, along CA-160

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — a thousand miles of sloughs, levee roads, pear orchards and drawbridges, with Locke, the only town in America built by Chinese immigrants for Chinese immigrants, still standing on its levee.

Local tip: Drive CA-160 south along the levee on a weekday and stop in Locke and Walnut Grove. It is forty minutes from Midtown, almost nobody goes, and it is the most genuinely unusual landscape within reach of the city.