Visiting San Francisco, United States: Top Sights on Foot

The best things to do in San Francisco include crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, discovering historic forts and waterfront museums, exploring Golden Gate Park, and seeing the city’s distinctive skyline. San Francisco combines dramatic architecture, science, art, and views across the bay, with landmarks that reveal different layers of the city’s history. Neywo offers a free audio guide for San Francisco with 255 narrated places.

What to See in San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge spans the strait between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, connecting San Francisco with Marin County. Its two towers and International Orange color have made it one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks.

The bridge opened to the public on May 27, 1937, after construction began in 1933. Its main span stretches 4,200 feet, or 1,280 meters, while its towers rise 746 feet, or 227 meters. Protected pedestrian and bicycle routes make it possible to experience the structure at a slower pace, with the roadway and passing ships far below.

Fort Point

At the southern entrance to the bay, Fort Point sits beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The massive masonry fort preserves the history of a site once used to defend San Francisco Bay.

The location was first fortified by the Spanish in 1794 as a supporting outpost for the Presidio of San Francisco. The present fort was completed by the United States Army just before the American Civil War, when an attack on San Francisco’s port was considered possible. Its historical name was Castillo de San Joaquín, or “Saint Joachim’s Castle.”

Treasure Island Museum and the Hall of Transportation

Treasure Island Museum offers a place to explore local history on the island. Nearby, the Hall of Transportation—also known as Building 2—survives from the 1939–40 Golden Gate International Exposition.

Built in 1938 in the Moderne style, the hall was designed by William Peyton Day and George William Kelham. It was intended to become an airplane hangar after the exposition, but that plan was never realized. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

Transamerica Pyramid

The sharply tapered Transamerica Pyramid defines the San Francisco skyline from the Financial District. Designed by William Pereira and built between 1969 and 1972, the tower rises 853 feet, or 260 meters, and has 48 stories.

It was San Francisco’s tallest building for many years after its completion and ranked as the eighth-tallest building in the world at the time. The building continued to evolve after its sale in 2020, with Norman Foster hired in 2022 to redesign its interiors and renovate the building.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, brings together painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts in a collection of more than 33,000 works.

Founded in 1935 as the first museum on the West Coast devoted exclusively to twentieth-century art, it moved to its current SoMa location in 1995. The building was designed by Mario Botta and expanded by Snøhetta. When it reopened in 2016, the expansion had more than doubled the previous gallery space and created almost six times as much public space.

Conservatory of Flowers

In Golden Gate Park, the Conservatory of Flowers combines a historic greenhouse with living collections of rare and exotic plants. Completed in the late 1870s, it is the oldest building in the park and the oldest surviving municipal wooden conservatory in the United States.

Its significance extends beyond botany. The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historical Places, and it is also a California Historical Landmark and a San Francisco Designated Landmark.

Palace of Fine Arts

The Palace of Fine Arts stands beside a lagoon in the Marina District. Created for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, it was designed to resemble a decaying Roman ruin.

The open-sky rotunda rises 162 feet, or 49 meters, and a long colonnade extends about 340 meters along the water. Although the original exposition structure was completely rebuilt between 1964 and 1974, the Palace of Fine Arts remains the only structure from the exposition surviving on its original site.

California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park is both a natural history museum and a research institute. Its collections contain more than 46 million specimens, and the institution also supports original research, exhibitions, and educational programs.

The Academy began in 1853 as a learned society. Its rebuilt main building reopened on September 27, 2008, and houses the natural history museum alongside the Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium. The building covers about 400,000 square feet, or 37,000 square meters.

M. H. de Young Memorial Museum

The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum opened in 1895 and is named after Michael H. de Young, an early San Francisco newspaperman and co-founder of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Its collections include American art from the seventeenth century to the present, textile arts and costumes, African and Oceanic art, art of the Americas, and contemporary art. The museum forms part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, together with the Legion of Honor.

Fisherman’s Wharf and USS Pampanito

At Fisherman’s Wharf, the USS Pampanito is preserved as a memorial and museum ship. This Balao-class submarine was built for the United States Navy in 1943 and carried out six war patrols between 1944 and 1945.

After serving as a United States Naval Reserve training ship from 1960 to 1971, the Pampanito became a National Historic Landmark. Its preservation allows visitors to encounter a vessel connected with wartime service, training, and museum history.

Exploratorium

The Exploratorium on the waterfront is a museum of science, technology, and arts built around participation. It contains more than a thousand interactive exhibits, with galleries focused on subjects including light and sound, human behavior, living systems, electricity and magnetism, and the local environment.

Founded in 1969 by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, the museum first opened at the Palace of Fine Arts before moving to Piers 15 and 17 in 2013. Its outdoor and Bay Observatory galleries extend the experience beyond the building.

Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist and the Internet Archive

The former Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, now the headquarters of the Internet Archive, connects San Francisco’s architectural heritage with the preservation of digital culture.

Built in 1923 and designed by Carl Werner in the Classical Revival style, the building is distinguished by its Corinthian columns and provides about 23,000 square feet of space. The Internet Archive, founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle, gives free access to digitized websites, software, music, audiovisual material, and printed works.

Coit Tower

Coit Tower rises 210 feet above Pioneer Park on Telegraph Hill, offering views over San Francisco and the bay. Built between 1932 and 1933 with money left by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, it was intended to beautify the city.

The Art Deco tower was designed by Arthur Brown Jr. and Henry Temple Howard. Its unpainted reinforced-concrete exterior includes a concrete phoenix relief above the entrance, while the interior is known for fresco murals in the American Social Realism style, created by 22 artists working on site.

Explore San Francisco with Neywo

Neywo lets you take a San Francisco self-guided walking tour without joining a group or following a schedule. The app has seven walking tours, one bus route, and one bike route:

• Chinatown to Telegraph Hill: 2.63 km, 101 minutes, 12 narrated stops
• Golden Gate Park: Statues, Gardens and Music Concourse: 2.69 km, 107 minutes, 12 stops
• Fisherman’s Wharf: Hairpins, Ships and Slot Machines: 3.6 km, 99 minutes, 9 stops
• The Embarcadero: Ferry Building and the Bay: 2.18 km, 74 minutes, 8 stops
• Nob Hill and Russian Hill: Cable Cars, Cathedrals and Octagons: 2.86 km, 91 minutes, 10 stops
• Downtown Museums and Towers: From the Old Mint to the Pyramid: 3.03 km, 104 minutes, 11 stops
• Civic Center to the Painted Ladies: 4.31 km, 115 minutes, 10 stops
• Muni 8: Union Square, Chinatown and North Beach: 2.2 km, 9 minutes, 7 stops
• Panhandle to the Golden Gate Bridge: 12.8 km, 64 minutes, 7 stops

Each story plays as you reach the place, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule. Narration is available in 11 languages. Download Neywo and explore San Francisco through its landmarks, museums, neighborhoods, and waterfront—while the city tells you its story one stop at a time. You can also continue exploring California and other destinations across the United States.