Explore San Francisco

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.

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.

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.

The California Academy of Sciences is a natural history museum and research institution in Golden Gate Park, founded in 1853. Its building by Renzo Piano, opened in 2008 under a planted living roof, houses the Steinhart Aquarium, the Morrison Planetarium, a four-storey rainforest dome and natural history halls.

The de Young Museum is a fine arts museum in Golden Gate Park, founded after the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 and named after the newspaper publisher M. H. de Young. Its copper-clad building by Herzog & de Meuron opened in 2005 with an observation tower, and it shows American art, textiles and art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

The Walt Disney Family Museum tells the life story of Walt Disney and was founded by his daughter Diane Disney Miller; it opened in 2009 in a former army barracks building in the Presidio. Its galleries follow his life from childhood to the opening of Disneyland, with early drawings, animation artwork, film clips and a large model of Disneyland.

The Legion of Honor is a fine arts museum in Lincoln Park, opened in 1924 as a gift of Alma and Adolph Spreckels and dedicated to Californians killed in the First World War. George Applegarth modelled the building on the Palais de la Légion d'honneur in Paris; it shows European art from antiquity to the 20th century, including sculpture by Rodin.

The USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum occupies the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, moored at the former Naval Air Station Alameda, in Alameda across the bay from San Francisco. Commissioned in 1943, the ship fought in the Pacific in the Second World War and in 1969 recovered the Apollo 11 and 12 crews; visitors tour its decks, aircraft and Apollo exhibits.