The idea of California as a hotbed of anarchy, radical ecology, religious cults, and a thousand and one other offbeat beliefs comes closer to being realized in Berkeley than in any other place in the state.

In the early 1960s, the Berkeley campus of the University of California was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, the stimulus for the vast anti-Vietnam War rallies which were rocking American society to its foundations by the end of the decade, and the town has been synonymous with People Power – in all its guises – ever since.

The campus and its 30,000 students dominate the town although Berkeley rebelliousness is by no means a student-only phenomenon. Many 1960s graduates are now among the left-leaning intellectuals and professionals who reside in comfortable homes in the surrounding hillsides, and Berkeley’s local government is among the most liberal in the U.S.

Detour – Mount Diablo

California’s Native Americans and early Spanish explorers both ascribed supernatural powers to what the latter named Mount Diablo, or Devil’s Mountain. On a sunny day at least, the mountain is a far from hellish place to be, the outlook from its 3,849-ft summit reaching far across northern California and south to the Sierra Nevadas.

To reach the mountain, leave Berkeley on Hwy-24 and then head south on 1-680, shortly taking the turn-off for Danville and joining the Diablo Road for Mount Diablo State Park.

Whatever your own attitudes may be, you would need to be a very wet blanket indeed not to get some fun out of a few hours in Berkeley, discovering for yourself why it’s nicknamed “Berserkely.” The campus should be your center of attention, but take time to explore the used bookshops and funky food stops along Telegraph Avenue, which leads from the university’s main entrance.

The university has several worthwhile museums but a first stop – after passing along the makeshift student- run stalls along Sproul Plaza dispensing political and environmental literature – should be the elegant Cam­panile. Built in 1914 and modelled on the belltower of St. Mark’s in Venice, the Campanile’s tower can be ascend­ed by elevator and the views stretch far across the campus and on to San Francisco Bay.

Among the university’s historical col­lections, the Bancroft Library mounts changing exhibitions from its colossal stock of rare books and manuscripts, and permanently displays the nugget claimed to have started the state’s gold-rush in 1846. The Pheobe A.Hearst Museum (http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu) of anthropology displays selections from its enormous anthropological stash, though you should look in particular for the section devoted to Ishi. The lone survivor of a Native American tribe decimated by white settlers, Ishi lived in the university’s anthropological department from 1911 until his death, alter catching a cold, three years later.

Elsewhere in Berkeley, devotees of Californian cuisine might like to make the pilgrimage to the “Gourmet Ghet­to” of Shattuck Avenue, where that par­ticular culinary genre came into being during the 1970s.