Going to Palm Springs to ogle dead stars’ homes? You’re missing the point

On a picture-perfect day in midwinter, I’m riding a bicycle through the Old Las Palmas neighbourhood, a few streets west of Palm Springs’ trendy downtown. Technically, I’m on Big Wheel’s star-spotting tour, but this is nothing like riding in a bus past imposing gates in Beverly Hills. For a start, it’s just me and a guide.

We pause outside Elvis’s honeymoon house before freewheeling down the street past Marilyn Monroe’s rental home, across from Sammy Davis jnr’s place, down the block from Zsa Zsa Gabor’s bungalow. And it’s all there because under the old Hollywood studio system, contracted movie stars couldn’t travel more than two hours from Hollywood while they had a film in production, and Palm Springs falls within that limit.

And yet if you’re coming to Palm Springs just to ogle dead stars’ homes, you’re missing the point. You come to Palm Springs to live like them: being here is like taking a trip through time. Mid-century architecture – built in a style conceived right here, “desert modernism” – keeps the 21st century at bay. Every street looks like a vintage postcard, every hotel’s a portal into the past.

I’m staying in Villa Royale, built in 1947. There are cushioned lounges by the pool, set among black-and-white tiles and featuring a grand fountain. Through palms and cypresses, I can see snow-capped mountains. Dinners are served either at an eight-seat bar or in black velvet chairs set in a lounge complete with fireplace.

There are hundreds of restaurants and bars in Palm Springs, and with a surprisingly productive produce-growing area just a few kilometres beyond town (we are in a desert, after all), the farm-to-table culinary scene rates among the best in regional America.

Better yet, nowhere “does” lunch quite like Palm Springs. At boutique hotel Holiday House, built in 1951, I eat a lobster roll with a glass of chilled rosé in a garden set beside a tile-lined bar and shuffleboard court.

At the Parker Palm Springs, built in the ’50s and owned by Western star Gene Autry from 1961 to 1994, I dine among petanque courts and croquet lawns. Angelina Jolie eats here at the high-end Mr Parker’s restaurant when she’s in town, and Leonardo DiCaprio occasionally books the whole joint, but like most of Palm Springs it feels more “fancy boho” than glamorous. Even the town’s current celeb hang-out, Bar Cecil, is a spot off the main thoroughfare you wouldn’t look twice at.

If you can get yourself out of the restaurants and bars you’ll discover that Greater Palm Springs comprises nine distinct cities surrounded by four of America’s highest mountain ranges. It’s also the “golf capital of the American West”, home to over 110 courses, some among the best in the US. Celebrities have flocked to the region’s golf resorts since the 1930s, playing in charity events like the Desert Classic (once the Bob Hope Desert Classic). Along with the mid-century architecture with its minimalist lines, low rooflines and floor-to-ceiling windows, these golf resorts dominate the landscape.