4 Best Sights in San Francisco, California

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.

When all the other fire hydrants went dry during the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake, this one kept pumping. Noe Valley and the Mission District were thus spared the devastation wrought elsewhere in the city, which explains the large number of pre-quake homes here. Every year on April 18th (the anniversary of the quake), folks gather here to share stories about the disaster, and the famous hydrant gets a fresh coat of gold paint.

Bay Area filmmaker George Lucas's 23-acre Letterman Digital Arts Center, a digital studio campus along the eastern edge of the land, is exquisitely landscaped and largely open to the public. If you have kids in tow or are a Star Wars fan yourself, make the pilgrimage to the Yoda Fountain between two of the arts-center buildings, then take your picture with the life-size Darth Vader statue in the lobby, open to the public on weekdays.

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.