San Francisco

8 Art Landmarks in San Francisco

8 landmarks with verified facts and stories

16th Avenue Tiled Steps
~2 min

16th Avenue Tiled Steps

16th Avenue & Moraga Street, San Francisco

hidden-gemnature

You're standing at the bottom of one hundred and sixty-three steps covered in seventy-five thousand hand-cut fragments of tile, mirror, and stained glass.

Balmy Alley Murals
~2 min

Balmy Alley Murals

Balmy Alley (between 24th and 25th Streets), San Francisco

countercultureculturalhidden-gem

Walk into this alley and every surface screams at you.

Camera Obscura
~2 min

Camera Obscura

1096 Point Lobos Avenue, San Francisco

hidden-gemquirkyscience

That giant camera-shaped building next to the Cliff House ruins is exactly what it looks like — a camera obscura, and it's one of the last functioning ones in the United States.

Coit Tower
~3 min

Coit Tower

1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard, San Francisco

architecturecounterculturedark-history

This tower exists because of a woman who crashed a firemen's funeral when she was fifteen years old — and that was the most normal thing Lillie Hitchcock Coit ever did.

Cupid's Span
~2 min

Cupid's Span

Rincon Park, The Embarcadero, San Francisco

hidden-gem

That enormous bow and arrow buried in the grass along the waterfront — sixty feet tall, with the arrow pointing skyward and the bow half-submerged in the earth — is Cupid's Span.

Grace Cathedral
~3 min

Grace Cathedral

1100 California Street, San Francisco

architecturedark-historyhistory

This cathedral sits on land that once belonged to Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four railroad barons who built the Transcontinental Railroad.

Vaillancourt Fountain
~2 min

Vaillancourt Fountain

Justin Herman Plaza, The Embarcadero, San Francisco

counterculturequirky

That massive concrete structure in the plaza — the one that looks like someone stacked brutalist building blocks during an earthquake — is the Vaillancourt Fountain, and it has been making people angry since the day it was unveiled in nineteen seventy-one.

Wave Organ
~2 min

Wave Organ

83 Green St, Embarcadero, San Francisco, 94111, United States

hidden-gemnaturequirky

If you've made it out here to the end of this jetty, you're already doing better than most tourists.

Explore art in San Francisco

GPS-guided narration at every landmark. Tap a spot on the map, hear the story. Every fact verified.