Capitola Village
— — pastel houses where the creek slips into the bay.
Not only on a wall.
“A pastel row of beach houses at the curve of Soquel Creek's last bend before the Pacific. The Venetian Court, a stretch of painted apartments built in 1924, sits above the sand on the south side of the wharf. Mornings here are grey and patient until the marine layer burns off. The wharf was rebuilt after the January 2023 storms took most of it apart. Locals come back the way they always have, with coffee, with surfboards, with strollers. The town claims to be California's first seaside resort. It still feels like one.
Capitola Village, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Capitola sits on the north shore of Monterey Bay in Santa Cruz County, about five miles southeast of downtown Santa Cruz. The village proper, a few short blocks of low buildings, wraps around the mouth of Soquel Creek where it crosses the beach into the Pacific. Founded in 1869 by Frederick Hihn as a campground resort, Capitola predates most California coastal towns and bills itself as the oldest seaside resort on the Pacific Coast. The city was formally incorporated in 1949 and the population is just under 10,000. Highway 1 runs immediately inland; the village itself is walkable end to end. Access is by car from Santa Cruz or via Soquel Drive from the east.
The pastel apartments along the south end of the beach are the Venetian Court, a row of stucco units built in 1924 in a Mediterranean-revival style. They sit directly above the sand, painted in soft pinks, blues, and yellows, and read at a glance as Italianate beach houses from the early twentieth century. The Venetian Court was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. At low tide, with the marine layer thinning, the colours go almost luminous against the bleached sand. They are the reason the village photographs the way it does, and the reason most people who arrive for the first time stop on the wharf to look back at the row.
Capitola sits in a marine Mediterranean micro-climate, with warm summers and mild winters and a daily rhythm shaped by the marine layer that drifts in off Monterey Bay. June and early July are typically grey through midday, what locals call June Gloom, and the village opens up in the afternoon. The clearest stretch runs from late August into October, when the fog lifts early and water temperatures in the bay reach about 60°F. Winter brings the Pacific's storm cycles; in January 2023 a series of atmospheric-river storms collapsed sections of the Capitola Wharf, which was rebuilt and reopened in 2024.