San Jose City Hall is one of downtown's clearest architectural statements: a Richard Meier-designed complex of pale modernist lines, a tall office tower, and a glass rotunda facing a broad civic plaza. It replaced older city offices and deliberately pulled municipal government back into the downtown core.
You do not need a formal tour to appreciate it. Walk the plaza, look into the rotunda, and then continue toward San Jose State, the art museum, or the older civic buildings to see how sharply this piece of 21st-century civic design contrasts with the rest of the city.