Palace Hotel

Palace Hotel Review

The city's oldest hotel, a Sheraton property, has a storied past. It opened in 1875, but fire destroyed the original Palace after the 1906 earthquake, despite the hotel's 28,000-gallon reservoir. (The current building dates from 1909.) President Warren Harding died at the Palace while still in office in 1923, and the body of King Kalakaua of Hawaii spent a night here after he died in San Francisco in 1891. The managers play up this ghoulish history with talk of a haunted guest room, but the real draw is simply the Palace's opulent surroundings. Glass cases off the main lobby contain memorabilia of the hotel's glory days.

San Francisco City Guides offers free guided tours of the Palace Hotel's grand interior. You see the glass-dome Garden Court restaurant, mosaic-tile floors in Oriental rug designs, and Maxfield Parrish's wall-size painting The Pied Piper, the centerpiece of the Pied Piper Bar. 415/557-4266. Tours Tues. and Sat. at 10, Thurs. at 2.