The city's oldest building and its namesake, whitewashed adobe Misión San Francisco de Asís is better known as Mission Dolores (Mission of the Sorrows) – tragically apt for Native conscripts who built it in 1776–82. Subjected to harsh living conditions and introduced diseases, some 5000 Ohlone and Miwok laborers were buried on Mission lands. Today you can pay respects at a graveyard memorial, and glimpse recently restored Native American handiwork: a Native basket-patterned ceiling, and an original Ohlone sacred heart mural.
In the adjoining ornate 1913 basilica, stained-glass windows depict California's 21 missions and the Seven Sorrows of Mary. The basilica's doors are usually only open during services, so you'll need to pass through the original adobe structure and cross a courtyard to enter the basilica's side door. The mission graveyard is the resting place of mission founders Don Luis Antonio Arguello, the first governor of Alta California under Mexican rule, and Don Francisco de Haro, the first mayor of San Francisco. Hitchcock fans looking for the grave of Carlotta Valdes will be disappointed: the tomb was only a prop for the film Vertigo.
