San Francisco Travel Guide
San Francisco is the cultural, commercial, and financial center in Northern California and a popular tourist destination, known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge
Places to See in San Francisco
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Taras Bobrovytsky, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
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Jeff P from Berkeley, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
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Fabrice Florin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
Chinatown
The oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese enclave outside Asia
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Coit Tower
210-foot tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, offering panoramic views over the city and the bay
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Fisherman's Wharf
Neighborhood and popular tourist attraction in San Francisco that roughly encompasses the northern waterfront area of San Francisco
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CucombreLibre from New York, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
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Christian Mehlführer, User:Chmehl, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
Tarwin Stroh-Spijer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
Taras Bobrovytsky, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
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Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
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Lombard Street
East-west street in San Francisco that is famous for a steep, one-block section with eight hairpin turns
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Jeff P from Berkeley, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
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Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted
Union Square
One-block plaza and surrounding area is one of the largest collections of department stores, upscale boutiques, gift shops, art galleries, and beauty salons in the United States
Overview
San Francisco (Spanish for "Saint Francis"), is a cultural, commercial, and financial center in Northern California. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include SF, San Fran, The City, and Frisco.
San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. After World War II, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "beatnik" and "hippie" countercultures, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.
A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district.
San Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino ethnic neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District.
Economy
The legacy of the California Gold Rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the "Wall Street of the West", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
Since the 1990s, San Francisco's economy has diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research. San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s. Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley.
Tourism and conventions
Tourism is one of the city's largest industries. The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide.
Lombard Street is a popular tourist destination in San Francisco, known for its "crookedness". Some of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, which is home to the famous "Painted Ladies". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American sitcom Full House. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sun-bathing seals, and the famous Alcatraz Island.
With the arrival of the "beat" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time.
Alamo Square is one of the most well known parks in the area, and is often a symbol of San Francisco for its popular location for film and pop culture.
There are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park, which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. Lake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered. The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "San Francisco", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Transamerica Pyramid Building
Saints Peter And Paul Church
