Belmont, city, San Mateo county, western California, U.S., near San Mateo. Settled in 1850 as a stagecoach station, it was known for its association with William C. Ralston, a Bank of California magnate who in 1866 transformed Count Leonetto Cipriani’s hillside villa into an ornate, rambling mansion; Ralston’s home is now the main building of Notre Dame de Namur University (founded 1851 in San Jose, moved 1923). Belmont became a shipping point for flowers, and until the early 1940s the city was known as the chrysanthemum centre of the country, a distinction it lost after Japanese American flower growers were removed from the area during World War II. Several sanitariums, including a neuropsychiatric centre, were built there, and in the second half of the 20th century the community grew as a southeastern residential suburb of San Francisco. Inc. 1926. Pop. (2000) 25,123; (2010) 25,835.