Palo Alto City Guide

Palo Alto is a city on California's San Francisco peninsula, located some 35 miles south of San Francisco and 25 miles north of San Jose. It has been the incubator for many of Silicon Valley's most successful technology companies, including Google, Facebook, PayPal, VMware and Logitech, and remains home to the global headquarters of Hewlett-Packard.

The origins of most of the city's technology startups can be traced to nearby Stanford University where many academics and researchers spun out ventures to commercialize their ideas. With this has come an influx of venture capital money, and Palo Alto today, while retaining something of a leafy college town feel, is a city of affluent entrepreneurs, academics, students, and financiers looking to bankroll the next big internet success story.

The city's downtown area is home to a diverse array of trendy cafes, restaurants and bars, clustered around University Avenue, Palo Alto's main street, and is where most of the city's social scene is focused, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

For visitors, other than a walk around Palo Alto's quaint tree-lined residential neighborhoods with their million dollar Spanish Colonial style homes, most of the sightseeing opportunities and attractions are found on the Stanford University campus, including the Main Quad with its Richardsonian Romanesque and Mission Revival style architecture, the Hoover Tower observation platform, Stanford Memorial Church, Cantor Arts Center and the Rodin Sculpture Garden.