Victorian National Historic Landmark on Coronado's beachfront since 1888 — 28 acres, multiple pools, watersports, and one of California's best beaches. The scale gives families genuine room to spread out.
Why We Chose It
The Hotel del Coronado has been the image of California beach luxury since 1888 — a sprawling wooden Victorian castle of red turrets, white clapboard, and 757 rooms on Coronado's beautiful stretch of Pacific beach, built by Elisha Babcock and Hampton Story when Coronado was a scrubland peninsula and San Diego was a frontier town. The list of guests reads like a compressed 20th-century American history: all 10 US presidents who served during the hotel's first century, the Prince of Wales, Marilyn Monroe (who filmed Some Like It Hot here in 1958), and the story — possibly apocryphal but eternally circulated — of the ghost of Kate Morgan, a young woman who died at the hotel in 1892 and whose room (3327) is the most-requested on the property. The beach directly in front of the hotel is Coronado Beach: a wide, white-sand Pacific strand named one of America's finest beaches by every major publication that produces such lists. The resort has been owned and operated by Hilton since 2016 and is a Curio Collection property; the renovation has modernized the amenities while preserving the Victorian architecture. The Crown Room — the hotel's historic main dining room with a 30-foot sugar pine ceiling — serves one of the theatrical Sunday brunches in California.
What Stands Out
- Most famous hotel on the West Coast — National Historic Landmark, continuously operating since 1888
- Filming location of Some Like It Hot (1958) with Marilyn Monroe — Room 3327 is still requested as the 'ghost room'
- Coronado Beach directly outside: repeatedly named one of America's finest beaches
- The Crown Room Sunday Brunch: 30-foot sugar pine ceiling, the theatrical dining room in San Diego
- Hosted every US president since Benjamin Harrison — the hotel that defined California luxury travel