City Hall

That mighty beaux-arts dome pretty much covers San Francisco’s grandest ambitions and fundamental flaws. Designed by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown Jr in 1915 to top Paris for flair and outsize the capitol building dome in Washington, DC, the dome was a little unsteady until its retrofit after the 1989 earthquake, when ingenious technology enabled the dome to swing on its base without raising alarm. The gold leafing on the dome’s exterior is a reminder of dot-com-era excess. But from the inside, the splendid rotunda has ringing acoustics, and if that dome could talk, it would tell of triumph and tragedy. Anti-McCarthy sit-in protesters were hosed off the grand staircase in 1960, but finally ran McCarthy out of town; Harvey Milk was assassinated here in 1978; and the cheers heard around the world in 2004 were from families and friends of the 4037 same-sex couples who celebrated their marriages here, thanks to Mayor Newsom’s short-lived challenge to California state marriage law. Take the elevator one flight down to discover intriguing public art exhibits, which range from photographs of senior subcultures to art by the blind. Free docent tours of City Hall meet at the tour kiosk near the Van Ness entrance, but City Hall is best seen in action. If you want insight into how San Francisco government works – or doesn’t, as the case may be – the Board of Supervisors meets Tuesdays at 2pm in City Hall; check the agenda and minutes online. Theoretically, visitors may be removed for ‘boisterous’ behavior, but this being San Francisco, democracy in action can get pretty rowdy without fazing seen-it-all security guards.