Powell St Cable Car Turnaround
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Peek through the passenger queue at Powell and Market Sts to spot cable-car operators leaping out, gripping the chassis of each trolley and slooowly…
Must-see attractions in San Francisco
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Willy Wonka would tip his hat to Domingo Ghirardelli (gear-ar-deli), whose business became the West’s largest chocolate factory in 1893. After the company…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Fisherman's Wharf – the Embarcadero and Jefferson St waterfront running from Pier 29 to Van Ness Ave – includes Pier 39, the Musée Mécanique, the Maritime…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Like a fossilized party favor, this romantic, ersatz Greco-Roman ruin is the city's memento from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The…
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
High-end stores ring Union Sq now, but this people-watching plaza has been a hotbed of protest, from pro-Union Civil War rallies to AIDS vigils. Atop the…
Japantown, Fillmore & Pacific Heights
The spiritual center of Japantown's commercial district is minimalist master Yoshiro Taniguchi's Peace Pagoda. It was donated by San Francisco's sister…
The Haight & Hayes Valley
Like surviving members of the Grateful Dead, this purple Victorian sports a touch of gray – but during the Summer of Love, this was where Jerry Garcia and…
North Beach & Chinatown
Enter through the Dragon archway donated by Taiwan in 1970, and you'll find yourself on the street formerly known as Dupont in its notorious red-light…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Explore that splotch of green on the map between Baker Beach and Crissy Field and you’ll find parade grounds, Yoda, a centuries-old adobe wall and some…
The Haight & Hayes Valley
The social center of hip, walkable, tree-lined Octavia Blvd is this pocket park, featuring Burning Man–inspired temporary sculpture installations, picnic…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
The focal point of Fisherman's Wharf isn't the waning fishing fleet but the carousel, carnival-like attractions, shops and restaurants of Pier 39 – and,…
The Mission, Dogpatch & Potrero Hill
Strange fascination is showcased at Jack Fischer Gallery – for example, sketches made by Agelio Batle's graphite skeleton as it jitters across a lab table…
San Francisco
The sun sets over the Pacific just beyond the fog at this blustery beach. Most days are too chilly for bikini-clad clambakes but fine for hardy…
Maritime National Historical Park
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Five historic ships are floating museums at this maritime national park, Fisherman's Wharf’s most authentic attraction. Moored along Hyde St Pier, the…
The Mission, Dogpatch & Potrero Hill
Welcome to paradise in a parking lot. When the local Pepsi bottling plant closed in the 1970s, neighbors wouldn't let urban blight take over the block –…
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
A project of the Exploratorium, the Wave Organ is a sound sculpture of PVC tubes and concrete pipes capped with found marble from San Francisco's old…
San Francisco
Populist millionaire Adolph Sutro imagined the Cliff House as a working man's paradise in 1863, but Sutro's dream has been rebuilt three times. The latest…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
