Explore San Francisco

San Francisco City Hall is the seat of the city and county government, a Beaux-Arts building by Arthur Brown Jr. that opened in 1915 after the 1906 earthquake destroyed its predecessor. Its dome rises higher than that of the US Capitol; visitors pass security to see the rotunda and grand staircase, and docent tours run on Fridays.

The Asian Art Museum is a city-owned museum of art from across Asia, founded on the collection Avery Brundage gave to San Francisco and opened in 1966. Since 2003 it occupies the former Main Library of 1917 on Civic Center, remodelled by Gae Aulenti, where galleries show works from South Asia, the Himalayas, China, Korea and Japan.

The Painted Ladies are a row of Victorian houses at 710–720 Steiner Street, facing Alamo Square park. Built between 1892 and 1896 by the developer Matthew Kavanaugh, they are painted in several colours that pick out their architectural details. The houses are private homes, seen from the street and from the park opposite.

Mission Dolores, formally Mission San Francisco de Asís, was founded by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in 1776. Its whitewashed adobe chapel, completed in 1791 largely by Ohlone labour, is the oldest intact building in San Francisco. Beside it stand the Mission Dolores Basilica of 1918 and a cemetery with graves of the city's early settlers.

Grace Cathedral is the Episcopal cathedral of the Diocese of California on Nob Hill, a Gothic Revival church in reinforced concrete designed by Lewis Hobart and built from 1927 to 1964. Inside and outside are labyrinths for walking, and its east doors are gilded replicas of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise in Florence.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened in 1935 as the first museum on the West Coast devoted to 20th-century art. Since 1995 it has occupied Mario Botta's building on Third Street, extended in 2016 by a wing designed by Snøhetta, and its galleries show painting, sculpture, photography, design and media art.

The San Francisco Cable Car Museum, opened in 1974 on Nob Hill, occupies the working Washington-Mason cable car barn and powerhouse. From its deck visitors watch the engines and winding wheels that pull the cables under the streets, and below is the sheave room; three antique cable cars from the 1870s, grips, models and photographs are on display.

Oracle Park is the baseball stadium of the San Francisco Giants on the bay shore in the South Beach neighborhood, opened in 2000 as Pacific Bell Park. Its right-field wall faces the water of McCovey Cove; visitors come for Major League Baseball games and for guided tours that go onto the field, into a dugout and the visitors' clubhouse.

Chase Center is an indoor arena in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood, opened in September 2019 as the home of the NBA's Golden State Warriors. It seats 18,064 for basketball, is also the home court of the WNBA's Golden State Valkyries and hosts concerts and other large events through the year.

Lombard Street's crooked block on Russian Hill, between Hyde and Leavenworth streets, descends in eight hairpin turns. The one-way, brick-paved section was built in 1922 to ease a 27 percent grade that was too steep for most vehicles, and it is lined with flower beds and houses. Stairways on both sides let visitors walk down.

The San Francisco Ferry Building is a ferry terminal on the Embarcadero at the foot of Market Street, designed by A. Page Brown and completed in 1898, with a 245-foot clock tower. After a restoration that ended in 2003, its 660-foot skylit nave holds a food hall with shops and restaurants, and ferries still leave from the piers behind it.

Coit Tower is a 64-metre Art Deco tower on Telegraph Hill, built in 1932–1933 with a bequest from Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify San Francisco. Fresco murals of California life, painted in 1934 under the Public Works of Art Project, cover the walls of its base, and an elevator rises to an observation deck overlooking the city and the bay.

The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art and human perception founded in 1969 by the physicist Frank Oppenheimer at the Palace of Fine Arts. Since 2013 it has occupied Piers 15 and 17 on the Embarcadero, where visitors try out hundreds of hands-on exhibits about light, sound, motion, living things and the bay.

The Conservatory of Flowers is a white wood-and-glass greenhouse in Golden Gate Park, completed in 1879 and the oldest building in the park. One of the first municipal conservatories in the United States, it houses a collection of rare and tropical plants under its central dome and wings, and is a California Historical Landmark.

Twin Peaks are two grassy hills about 282 metres high near the geographic centre of San Francisco, the second and third highest natural points in the city. Christmas Tree Point, an overlook just below the North Peak, looks over downtown, the bay and the bridges, and footpaths and steps climb from Twin Peaks Boulevard to both summits.

Ripley's Believe It or Not! on Jefferson Street at Fisherman's Wharf is a branch of the Ripley's chain of curiosity museums. Built on the collection begun by cartoonist Robert Ripley, it shows unusual artifacts, animal oddities, art made from everyday materials and interactive games; a mirror maze shares the building.

Hard Rock Cafe San Francisco is the city's branch of the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain, first opened in San Francisco in 1984 and now at the entrance to Pier 39 on the waterfront. It serves American dishes among displays of rock and pop music memorabilia and has a Rock Shop selling the chain's merchandise.

Aquarium of the Bay is a public aquarium at Pier 39 on the Embarcadero, opened in 1996 and devoted to the waters of San Francisco Bay and its rivers. Visitors walk through clear underwater tunnels beneath sharks, rays and schools of fish, and see river otters and touch pools with bay animals.

SS Jeremiah O'Brien is a Liberty ship launched in 1943 in South Portland, Maine, which made seven wartime voyages and eleven Channel crossings to the Normandy beaches during the D-Day landings of 1944. Now a museum ship moored at Pier 35, she is kept in working order, and visitors go aboard from the engine room to the bridge.

USS Pampanito is a Balao-class submarine launched in 1943 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, which made six war patrols in the Pacific during the Second World War. Moored at Pier 45 at Fisherman's Wharf and open as a museum ship since 1982, she lets visitors walk through the torpedo rooms, engine rooms, galley and crew bunks.