7 Best Sights in The Western Shoreline, San Francisco

Built to commemorate soldiers from California who died in World War I and set atop cliffs overlooking the ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Marin Headlands, this beautiful Beaux Arts building in Lincoln Park displays an impressive collection of 4,000 years of ancient and European art. A pyramidal glass skylight in the entrance court illuminates the lower-level galleries, which exhibit prints and drawings, European porcelain, and ancient Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art. The 20-plus galleries on the upper level display European art (paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and tapestries) from the 14th century to the present day. The Auguste Rodin collection includes two galleries devoted to the master and a third with works by Rodin and other 19th-century sculptors. An original cast of Rodin's The Thinker welcomes you as you walk through the courtyard. Also impressive is the 4,526-pipe Spreckels Organ; live concerts take advantage of the natural sound chamber produced by the building's massive rotunda. As fine as the museum is, the setting and view outshine the collection.

Lincoln Park is a wild, 275-acre park with windswept cliffs and panoramic views. The Coastal Trail, the park's most dramatic, leads out to Lands End; pick it up west of the Legion of Honor (at the end of El Camino del Mar) or from the parking lot at Point Lobos and El Camino del Mar. Time your hike to hit Mile Rock at low tide, and you might catch a glimpse of two wrecked ships peeking up from their watery graves.

Be careful if you hike here; landslides are frequent, and people have fallen into the sea by standing too close to the edge of a crumbling bluff top.

Lincoln Park's 18-hole golf course ( www.lincolnparkgolfcourse.com) is on land that in the 19th century was the Golden Gate Cemetery. (When digging has to be done in the park, human bones still occasionally surface.) Next door on 33rd Avenue and California Street are the dazzling, mosaic Lincoln Park Steps, which rival the 16th Avenue Steps and the Hidden Garden Steps in the Sunset District. They provide a delightful backdrop for contemplation or an Instagram photo op.

A community-based project dedicated in 2005, these 163 tiled steps have beautiful designs showing fish, shells, animals, starry skies, and other scenes. The steps are in a residential neighborhood, so enjoy the steps and the city views from the top quietly.

Stretching 3 miles along the western side of the city from the Richmond to the Sunset, this sandy swath of the Pacific coast is good for flying kites, jogging, or walking the dog—but not for swimming. The water is so cold that surfers wear wet suits year-round, and riptides are strong—drownings are not infrequent. As for sunbathing, it's rarely warm enough here; think meditative walking instead of sun worshipping.

Paths on both sides of the Great Highway lead from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard (near the zoo); the beachside path winds through landscaped sand dunes, and the paved path across the highway is good for biking and in-line skating (though you have to rent bikes elsewhere). The Beach Chalet restaurant and brewpub is across the Great Highway from Ocean Beach, about five blocks south of the Cliff House. Amenities: parking (no fee); showers; toilets. Best for: solitude; sunset; walking.

Occupying prime oceanfront property, the San Francisco Zoo touts itself as a wildlife-focused recreation center that inspires visitors to become conservationists. Integrated exhibits group different species of animals from the same geographic areas together in enclosures that don't look like cages. More than 2,000 animals and 250 species reside here, including endangered species such as the snow leopard, Sumatran tiger, and grizzly bear. The zoo's superstar exhibit is Grizzly Gulch, where orphaned grizzly bear sisters Kachina and Kiona enchant visitors with their frolicking and swimming. The Mexican Gray Wolf grotto houses the smallest gray wolf and the most endangered wolf subspecies in the world. The Lemur Forest has seven varieties of the bug-eyed, long-tailed primates from Madagascar and is the country's largest outdoor lemur habitat. African kikuyu grass carpets the circular outer area of the Jones Family Gorilla Preserve, one of the most natural gorilla habitats of any zoo in the world. Other popular exhibits include Penguin Island, Koala Crossing, and the African Savanna exhibit. The 6-acre Children's Zoo has about 300 mammals, birds, and reptiles, plus a huge playground, a restored 1921 Dentzel carousel, and a mini–steam train.

Along the oceanfront, to the north of the Cliff House, lie the ruins of the once-grand glass-roof Sutro Baths. Today visitors can explore this evocative historical site and listen to the pounding surf. Adolph Sutro, eccentric onetime San Francisco mayor, built the bath complex in 1896 so that everyday folks could enjoy the benefits of swimming. Six enormous baths—freshwater and seawater—and more than 500 dressing rooms plus several restaurants covered 3 acres and accommodated 25,000 bathers. Likened to Roman baths in a European glass palace, the baths were for decades a favorite destination of San Franciscans. The complex fell into disuse after World War II, was closed in 1952, and burned down (under questionable circumstances) during demolition in 1966. To get here, park in the main Lands End parking lot and walk down toward the ruins by the ocean.

Crows and other large birds battle the heady breezes at this cliff-top park on what were once the grounds of the home of Adolph Sutro, an eccentric mining engineer and former San Francisco mayor. An extremely wealthy man, Sutro may have owned about 10% of San Francisco at one point, but he couldn't buy good taste: a few remnants of his gaudy, faux-classical statue collection still stand (including the lions at what was the main gate). Monterey cypresses and Canary Island palms dot the park, and photos on placards depict what things looked like before the house burned down in 1896.

All that remains of the main house is its foundation. Climb up for a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean and the Cliff House below (which Sutro once owned), and try to imagine what the perspective might have been like from one of the upper floors. San Francisco City Guides ( 415/557–4266  www.sfcityguides.org) runs a free Saturday tour of the park that starts at 2 pm; you must reserve ahead.