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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park was created for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 and is the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States. Its three acres of paths and ponds lead past a five-storey pagoda, stone lanterns, a drum bridge and a teahouse, among pruned pines, maples and cherry trees.

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 San Francisco Zoo and Gardens covers about 100 acres in the southwest corner of the city, between Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean. Founded as the Fleishhacker Zoo, with planning begun in 1929, it is owned by the city and keeps more than 1,500 animals, from giraffes and gorillas to penguins, among gardens near the ocean.

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.