Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
A true SF survivor, the Palace opened in 1875 but was gutted during the 1906 earthquake. Opera star Enrico Caruso was jolted from his Palace bed by the…
Must-see attractions in The Bay Area
Old St Mary's Cathedral & Square
North Beach & Chinatown
California's first cathedral was started in 1853 by an Irish entrepreneur determined to give wayward San Francisco some religion – despite the cathedral's…
North Beach & Chinatown
What's that – your hometown doesn’t have a street named after an African American Catholic-Jewish-voodoo anarchist street poet? Revered in France as the…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
'Dot-com' was coined in mid-’90s San Francisco, when venture capitalists and tattooed cyberpunks plotted website launches in South Park cafes. But…
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley
'Cal' is one of the country's top universities, California's oldest university (1866), and home to 40,000 diverse, politically conscious students. Next to…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Founded on a grant from Bay Area cartoon legend Charles M Schultz of Peanuts fame, this bold museum isn't afraid of the dark, political or racy – cases in…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Market St's traffic-stopping 1937 Mayan deco landmark was built to accommodate 300 wholesale furniture-design showrooms – but, a decade ago, fewer than 30…
San Francisco
Grassy dunes up to 200ft high at Fort Funston give an idea of what the Sunset District looked like until the 20th century. A defunct military installation…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Radical ideals in the form of distinctive buildings make beloved SF landmarks; this standout 1894 example is the collaborative effort of 19th-century Bay…
UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley
Berkeley
With 34 acres and more than 10,000 types of plants, this garden in the hills above campus has one of the most varied collections in the USA. Flora from…
North Beach & Chinatown
Wild parrots, tai chi masters, and nonagenarian churchgoing nonnas (grandmothers) are the local company you'll keep on this lively patch of lawn. This was…
Oakland
The area where writer and adventurer Jack London once raised hell now bears his name. The pretty waterfront location is worth a stroll, especially when…
North Beach & Chinatown
Dragons bring this shadowy brick byway roaring to life. The narrow entryway is illuminated with 'Dragon Boats Chasing Moonlight,' a new mosaic mural…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Enter a Golden State of enlightenment at this Californiana treasure trove, featuring themed exhibitions drawn from the museum's million-plus California…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
An 1890s military barracks in the Presidio houses 10 galleries that chronologically tell the exhaustively long story of Walt Disney's life. Opened in 2009…
Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic Park
East Bay
The struggle for civil rights and women's equality is the focus of one of the East Bay's most significant historical sites. The visitor center has a small…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
A monumental hint to sailors in need of a scrub, this restored, ship-shaped 1939 Streamline Moderne landmark is decked out with Works Progress…
San Francisco Botanical Garden
San Francisco
There’s always something blooming in these 55-acre gardens, which cover a world of vegetation from South African savanna to New Zealand cloud forest. The…
Japantown, Fillmore & Pacific Heights
If these red-velvet parlor walls could talk this 1886 Queen Anne–style Victorian could tell you about earthquakes, booms, busts and untimely deaths. This…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
The Presidio's oldest building dates to the late 1700s, and was fully renovated in 2014, revealing gorgeous Spanish-Moorish adobe architecture. The free…
North Beach & Chinatown
California's earliest high-tech adopters weren't 1970s Silicon Valley programmers – they were Chinatown switchboard operators c 1894. To connect callers,…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Everyone loves this easy-access cove at Van Ness Ave's northern end, flanked by the massive comma-shaped Municipal Pier, where fishermen cast their lines…
East Bay
Collecting a light dusting of snowflakes on the coldest days of winter, Mt Diablo (3849ft) is over 1200ft higher than Mt Tamalpais in Marin County. On a…
San Francisco
Since the 1870s, SFAI has been at the vanguard of Bay Area art movements – including 1960s Bay Area abstraction, 1970s conceptual art and 1990s new-media…
San Francisco
America's legendary coast-to-coast Lincoln Hwy officially ends at 100-acre Lincoln Park, which served as San Francisco's cemetery until 1909. The city's…
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
The Peninsula
Nobel Prize–winning scientific discoveries have been made at this 2-mile-long linear accelerator – the world's longest – built in the mid-1960s…
North Beach & Chinatown
Colorful murals hint at the colorful characters who once roamed SF’s oldest alleyway – known during the Gold Rush variously as Mexico, Spanish or Manila…
North Beach & Chinatown
If these copper-clad walls could talk, they'd name-drop shamelessly. The tower's original occupant was political boss Abe Ruef, ousted in 1907 and sent to…
Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Recently renovated and gilt to the hilt indoors, this 1925 building made architect Timothy Pflueger’s reputation with its black-marble deco lobby and…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
San Francisco grew from its docks, and this 10,000-sq-ft visitors center for the nearby maritime national historical park details how, with a permanent…
San Francisco Murals at Rincon Annex Post Office
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Only in San Francisco could a post office prove so controversial. This art-deco landmark is lined with vibrant Works Project Administration murals of SF…
Marin County
Just west of Lagunitas, this small park has stands of tall redwood trees for picnicking beneath or hiking around. The wheelchair-accessible, 1.5-mile…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
A grand light well illuminates SF's favorite subjects: poetry in the Robert Frost Collection, civil rights in the Hormel LGBTQIA Center, SF music zines in…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
When Timothy Pflueger’s radical design was revealed on Union Sq in 1948, SF society was shocked: San Francisco’s flagship clothing store appeared…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Sharks circle overhead, manta rays sweep by and seaweed sways all around at the Aquarium of the Bay, where you wander through glass tubes surrounded by…
Pigeon Point Light Station State Historic Park
The Peninsula
A half-dozen miles south of Pescadero along the coast, this 115ft-high light station is one of the tallest lighthouses on the West Coast. The 1872…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Bet you didn't think anyone could capture Chuck Close's giant portraits, Robert Bechtle's hyper-realistic street scenes or Kiki Smith's painstaking wall…
Ruth Asawa's San Francisco Fountain
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Covered in local landmarks and colorful SF characters – burlesque icon Carol Doda, psychedelic rockers Jefferson Airplane, protesters declaring themselves…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Gold miners needed somewhere to stash and send cash, so Wells Fargo opened in this location in 1852. Today this storefront museum covers gold rush–era…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Cities are what you make of them, and urban-planning nonprofit SPUR invites you to reimagine San Francisco (and your own hometown) with gallery shows that…
