The Mission Inn Hotel and Spa 3649 Mission Inn Avenue • Riverside • California 92501

Upon arriving at the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa you may wonder, as we did, exactly what kind of missionaries had inhabited this unique and eccentric edifice. The truth is, the Inn was never an actual mission housing actual missionaries; it was the personal, lifelong and quixotic “mission” of Frank Miller, the man who built what some have called an “architectural wonder.”

A wondrous, eclectic assemblage of styles, the Mission Inn achieved its national historic landmark status in 1976. Starting with Mission Revival, the hotel now incorporates architectural styles from all over the world: Moorish, Italian Renaissance, Spanish Baroque, Chinese and Japanese. It’s a dazzling array of flying buttresses, domes, fountains, statues, carved pillars, towers, gargoyles, balconies, plazas, turrets, spiral staircases, gardens, bells, colorful tile and stained glass, all constructed to display the extensive collection of art and artifacts that Miller gathered on his world travels.

After its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, a succession of owners and repeated bankruptcies brought the hotel close to demolition, but a seven-year, $55-million renovation during the 1980s restored the Mission Inn’s grandeur.