Not long after I first arrived in Santa Barbara, a friend took me hiking in the mountains overlooking the city. It was a gray morning in early June and the town was draped under a layer of coastal fog. We started up Rattlesnake Canyon and gently ascended through oak woodlands and across meadows thick with wildflowers. As we gained elevation, the clouds grew thinner and diffused sunlight began to break through.

We scrambled to the top of Flores Peak some 3,000 feet above the city and took in the view. From here the sky was clear blue and the billowing marine layer stretched out below us, as far as the eye could see. A few shadowy peaks and ridgelines pierced through the white expanse and in the far distance California's Channel Islands floated above the horizon like a mirage. The air was still and we felt ourselves suspended between earth and sky.

Santa Barbara has often felt to me like a world apart, an enchanted realm of wide-open vistas bathed in gold and silver sunlight, a place where plants bloom year-round and the air is always lightly permeated with the scent of jasmine, lavender and sage. For me the place evokes the glamour, ambience and natural splendor of the Côte d'Azur, Amalfi Coast and other gilded coastlines I used to visit as a boy growing up in Europe. It seems fitting that for over a century Santa Barbara and its neighboring seaside communities have been affectionately referred to as the "American Riviera."

If the place seems blessed with unfair advantages, that's because it is. Santa Barbara is unique among California's coastal cities in that it faces south rather than west. The sun glints off the sea all day. In the winter when the days are short you can track its full sweep across the sky, both rising and setting over the ocean. The coastline's perfect southern exposure combined with the sheltering embrace of the mountains contribute to its famously mild and seductive climate.

By the time my friend and I began our descent back into town, the clouds were burning off and familiar landmarks were coming into view. We made out Santa Barbara's historic Mission with its graceful bell towers and expansive courtyards. The Arlington theater with its elegant steeple and art-deco finial was clearly visible downtown. A few blocks away the sprawling county courthouse, like a Spanish castle with its turret, sunken garden and majestic clock tower, emerged from the mist.

For a small city of just 90,000 people, Santa Barbara has always loomed large in the collective imagination. With its whitewashed walls, red roof-tiles and open-air paseos, the city epitomizes the laid-back elegance of the California good life. The pristine beaches and unspoiled coastline are instantly recognizable from postcards and magazine covers. Santa Barbara consistently ranks among the American cities with the best weather. And the city's burgeoning food and wine scene, drawing on its thriving community of artisinal producers and world-class wineries, continues to garner international attention and acclaim.

Yet for all of its many distinctions, nothing has contributed more to the mystique of Santa Barbara than its association with wealth and celebrity. For over a century, the city — and its affluent neighbor Montecito, in particular — has been a magnet for wealthy industrialists, tech entrepreneurs, movie stars and media moguls. The influx has made splashy headlines around the world in recent years with the arrival of a new generation of celebrities, from Hollywood royalty to self-exiled royals.

There is a certain irony in Santa Barbara's image as a mecca of glamour and glitz. Many are drawn to the place precisely because it offers a haven from the outside world. Santa Barbara has always been, almost by definition, a quiet hideout. It's the place you disappear to on your honeymoon or silent retreat, where you go to escape from worldly pressures, or where you find refuge from the media glare. The private estates in and around Santa Barbara, with their high walls and big security gates, speak to its near-obsession with privacy and seclusion.

Still, while some see it as a playground of the super-famous and super-rich, that is not the Santa Barbara I've known. When I first arrived in the early 1990s, the place seemed to me, and often referred to itself, as a sleepy town of artists and surfers and free spirits. It was a city with too many bookstores and cafes to count and, as rumor had it, more writers per capita than any other town in America. I moved in with a friend who lived in a rustic beach house owned by one of the Beach Boys. Every morning I woke up to the sound of seabirds and crashing waves. For me Santa Barbara, like California itself, had an immense, beckoning sweetness. For all of its wealth and polish, the town always felt open, accessible and intimate.

As the biggest cultural waypoint between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the city benefits by its proximity to both yet has a distinctive identity of its own. Today Santa Barbara is eclectic, innovative and surprisingly cosmopolitan. Its character is being molded to an ever-greater degree by the University of California, Santa Barbara, now a top "Public Ivy" and one of the world's leading research universities with a faculty that includes Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and economics. The city is also recognized as a center of innovation and entrepreneurship, and — thanks to Google's Quantum AI campus — a vital hub for the emerging field of quantum computing.

Santa Barbara may be a haven for the economic, cultural and academic elite, yet it's also a city of artisans and craftspeople, shopkeepers and restauranteurs, songwriters and surfboard shapers. It attracts people from near and far, including restless souls like myself who thought they were just passing through, but never left.

This essay is excerpted from the introduction to Santa Barbara: A Portrait, a coffee table book by photographer Bill Zeldis.