The best neighborhoods in Sacramento

Born from the boom of the 1849 Gold Rush, Sacramento, the laid-back capital of California, has a decidedly slower pace of life these days.

Grand Victorian houses painted in playful colors rub shoulders with more staid modern structures, and Sacramento’s low-rise cityscape has just a single building above 30 stories, making the city feel manageable to explore even if you only have time for a short visit.

Once bounded by the Sacramento and American Rivers, the city limits have pushed well beyond these natural barriers – though the main neighborhoods that travelers will want to put on their itineraries still lie around Sacramento’s original foundations.

Here are the best Sacramento neighborhoods to explore on your trip.

Chock full of brick structures with old-timey signage, Old Sacramento is where the city got its start, and today this district is the largest collection of Gold Rush-era buildings in the state. Sandwiched into just a few blocks between the Sacramento River and Interstate 5, Old Sacramento has plenty of kitschy shops, bars, restaurants and cafes, reachable by raised wooden boardwalks that run above and along the cobblestone streets. This area is particularly atmospheric in early September during Gold Rush Days when the streets are covered in truckloads of dirt and plied by horse-drawn carriages and costumed actors and performers put on a show.

Holding down the fort at the northern end of the area are the California State Railroad Museum and the Sacramento History Museum, perfect spots for trainspotters and history nerds to while away part of a day. The Sacramento History Museum runs fascinating Underground Tours that take you below the current street level to show how the buildings were put on supports and ratcheted up an entire floor in the…