Experience the best of Fresno

Fresno spreads across the flat San Joaquin Valley, surrounded by some of the most productive farmland in the country, with grapes, raisins, figs, almonds, peaches and oranges. The city grew with the railway in the 1870s, and its Tower District, with a theatre of 1939 and older bungalow streets under tall palms, is the arty quarter. The Forestiere Underground Gardens, dug by hand by a Sicilian immigrant from 1906, form a maze of courtyards, rooms and fruit trees beneath the ground.

Roeding Park holds the zoo and gardens, and the writer William Saroyan, born in Fresno, wrote of the city's Armenian community. The Sierra Nevada rises along the eastern horizon: the road to Yosemite's southern entrance runs north-east, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, with groves of giant sequoias, lie to the east.

Armenian, Hmong, Punjabi and Mexican communities shape the food, from lavash and kebabs to tamales and spiced noodle soups, and farm stands sell fruit by the roadside. Summers are dry and very hot, and in winter the valley fills with tule fog.