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Attractions & Activities

About San Francisco Attractions & Activities

San Francisco Attractions & Activities

Geography alone ensures that San Francisco – nestled along the Bay and looking out towards the Marin Headlands – gets its due share of attention. However, the city’s manmade landmarks, especially the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, dress nature with vintage architecture, creating easily identifiable features. San Francisco’s hills also grant the city readymade character. Telegraph Hill, for example, is crowned by the Art Deco Coit Tower, which affords sweeping views and striking, WPA-commissioned murals. Russian Hill, with its steep grade, is the site of Lombard Street, whose switchbacks have earned it the nickname “world’s crookedest street.” This same rolling terrain inspired cable cars, which still ferry visitors along photo-popular routes in the city’s busiest neighborhoods. For a more sobering glimpse of San Francisco, take the short ride out to Alcatraz, whose crumbling remains offer a haunting look at the prison that once caged the nation’s most dangerous criminals. Back on the mainland, fascinating museums showcase art treasures from around the globe. The Asian Art Museum, in the Civic Center, is a wonderful repository of Eastern culture, and the de Young, in Golden Gate Park, now boasts a brand-new, copper-clad structure and a reconsidered layout – a glorious renewal years in the making.


-- Kelly Sigmon, Senior Editor

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