🇺🇸 United States · West and California
San Francisco is, for many, the most beautiful and charming city in the United States: a place of dizzying hills and Victorian houses looking out over the Pacific and one of the most spectacular bays in the world. It is the city of the Golden Gate Bridge, that deep red engineering marvel emerging from the fog; of the cable cars that climb and drop down the slopes; of the prison island of Alcatraz in the middle of the bay; and of neighborhoods with so much personality that each one feels like a world apart. It is elegant and bohemian, progressive and dreamy, classic and innovative at once.
Because San Francisco is also the cradle of the freest and most creative spirit in the United States: countercultural movements were born here, like the hippies in Haight-Ashbury and the beatniks in North Beach; here is the Castro, the historic heart of the LGBTQ+ rights movement; and here, in its metropolitan area (Silicon Valley), beats the technological heart of the planet. It is the city of the first Chinatown in the Americas, of superb food, of walks by the sea and of a light that, when the fog lifts, turns everything magical.
This guide covers the essentials of San Francisco with a practical, warm eye: how to cross the Golden Gate, how to visit Alcatraz, how to ride a cable car, which neighborhoods to walk, what to eat, how to get around its hills and how to make the most of its changeable weather and its natural surroundings. San Francisco tends to win over anyone who visits: it is compact, walkable, beautiful and brimming with character.
The bay region was inhabited by the Ohlone, a native people of the central coast of California. The European presence arrived with Spain: in 1776, almost at the same time, the Presidio (military fort) and Mission San Francisco de Asís ('Mission Dolores') were founded, giving the settlement its name and its origin. Under Spanish and then Mexican rule, it was a small village called Yerba Buena. In 1846-1848, after the war between Mexico and the United States, California passed into American hands, and the town was renamed San Francisco. Just then, in 1848, gold was discovered in California, and the Gold Rush of 1849 transformed San Francisco overnight: from a village of a few hundred people it became a city of tens of thousands, the port of entry for gold seekers from all over the world (hence the '49ers' nickname). The city grew at dizzying speed, drawing immigrants from everywhere, including a large Chinese community (the country's first Chinatown). In 1906 a devastating earthquake and the fire that followed destroyed much of the city, which was rebuilt with remarkable speed. In the 20th century San Francisco established itself as a cultural and progressive beacon, the cradle of countercultural movements (beatniks, hippies) and of LGBTQ+ activism, and, from the end of the century, the epicenter of the Silicon Valley tech revolution. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The golden state of the Pacific: land of dozens of Native peoples and of the Franciscan missions, forged by the gold rush of 1849, today the largest economy in the United States and the cradle of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and legendary parks such as Yosemite and Sequoia.
Read the history of California →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
For more than two centuries, Spanish ships sailed past the entrance to San Francisco Bay again and again without seeing it: fog and a deceptive angle of the coast hid one of the biggest and most perfect bays on the Pacific. Only in 1769 did a party of Spanish soldiers, exhausted and lost overland, climb a hill and come suddenly upon that immense sheet of water. Without looking for it, they had found the site of a future legendary city.
But long before that discovery, the peninsula and the bay region were inhabited by the Ohlone (also called Costanoan), a group of native peoples with related languages who lived in many villages along the central coast of California. The Ohlone made the most of the extraordinary natural wealth of the bay and its surroundings: they fished, gathered shellfish, hunted, and collected acorns (a staple food) and other fruits of the land. They lived in small communities, in a setting of great abundance and ecological diversity.
San Francisco Bay, one of the largest and most sheltered on the Pacific coast, was an extremely rich ecosystem, with marshes, estuaries and abundant wildlife. It was in exactly that setting that Gaspar de Portolá's overland expedition sighted the bay in 1769, opening the door to Spanish colonization.
The arrival of the Spanish would drastically and tragically transform the world of the Ohlone. The mission system, disease and the changes imposed on them decimated the native population and dismantled their way of life. Today the descendants of the Ohlone keep their identity alive, and their memory endures as the first inhabitants of this land beside the bay.
The Spanish founding of San Francisco goes back to 1776, a meaningful year (the same as the independence of the eastern colonies, on the other side of the continent). That year the Spanish established two key institutions on the tip of the peninsula: the Presidio of San Francisco, a military fort to defend the strategic entrance to the bay, and Mission San Francisco de Asís, popularly known as 'Mission Dolores', intended for the evangelization of the native peoples. Both, dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi, gave the place its name.
Over the following decades, under Spanish and then Mexican rule (after Mexican independence in 1821), the area was little more than the fort, the mission and, beside the bay, a small village of civilian settlers and traders called Yerba Buena ('good herb', after a local aromatic plant). It was a modest, remote settlement at the far edge of Alta California, far from the centers of power and with a very small population. Nothing hinted at the dizzying future ahead of it.
The change began to take shape in the mid-19th century. In 1846-1848, during the war between Mexico and the United States, American forces took control of California, which passed to the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). In 1847 the small village of Yerba Buena was officially renamed San Francisco. The event that would transform it forever was about to happen.
The event that transformed San Francisco overnight was the discovery of gold in California, in January 1848, in the mountains east of the region. The news spread around the world and set off the legendary California Gold Rush. From 1849 on, tens of thousands of people from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Australia and China rushed to California in search of a fortune. Those gold seekers went down in history as the 'forty-niners', a nickname that survives today in the city's American football team.
San Francisco, as the main port of entry to the gold region, went through an unprecedented explosion: in barely a couple of years it went from a village of a few hundred people to a bustling, chaotic city of tens of thousands, full of people from all over the world, of fortunes made and lost, of taverns, shops and feverish, disorderly growth. The bay filled with ships, many of them abandoned by crews running for the mines. It was one of the most dizzying bursts of urban growth in history.
That human avalanche defined the character of San Francisco: a cosmopolitan, diverse, enterprising and open city from its very origins, with an extraordinary mix of backgrounds. Among the newcomers, a large community of Chinese immigrants established what would become the first and oldest Chinatown in the United States. The wealth of gold (and, later, of Nevada silver) consolidated San Francisco as the great metropolis of the West, with its port, its banks, its mansions on the hills and its growing importance.
The most dramatic catastrophe in the history of San Francisco happened in the early hours of 18 April 1906, when a violent earthquake shook the city. The quake, originating on the San Andreas Fault (which crosses California and of which the region is very aware), was of great magnitude and caused enormous damage on its own. But the real devastation came afterward: the earthquake broke the gas and water mains, and the resulting fires, which crews could not put out for lack of water, burned for days and razed much of the city.
Between the earthquake and the fire, a large share of San Francisco was destroyed, and thousands of people died or were left homeless (the casualty figures, long played down, were very high). It was one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States. The image of the city in ruins and in flames was seared into the national memory.
But, true to the enterprising spirit of its origins, San Francisco rebuilt with astonishing speed and determination. Within a few years the city rose from its ashes, rebuilding its buildings and its infrastructure and showing a remarkable capacity for recovery. To celebrate its rebirth, in 1915 it staged a splendid world's fair, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which showed the world a renewed and thriving San Francisco. The 1906 earthquake remained a wound and, at the same time, a demonstration of the city's resilience (it would live through major earthquakes again, such as the one in 1989).
The 20th century established San Francisco as an emblematic and deeply original city. In 1937 its most universal symbol opened: the Golden Gate Bridge, an engineering feat that spanned the dangerous entrance to the bay and immediately became one of the most recognizable images in the world. The city also grew during the Second World War as a great port and center of the Pacific war industry. And in 1945 it hosted the conference where the Charter of the United Nations was signed, giving birth to the UN there.
But what would give San Francisco its most singular cultural fame were the countercultural movements that flourished in it. In the 1950s the North Beach neighborhood was the heart of the beat generation (the beatniks), with writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. And, above all, in the 1960s the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became the mecca of the hippie movement and of the 1967 Summer of Love, the epicenter of the counterculture, psychedelic music, pacifism and the ideals of peace, love and freedom that marked an entire generation around the world.
San Francisco thus took hold as a beacon city of progressivism, tolerance and diversity. From the 1970s on, the Castro district became the heart of the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, with pioneering figures such as Harvey Milk, and the city led social gains and the fight against the AIDS epidemic. That open, creative and rebellious identity became an essential part of the soul of San Francisco.
In recent decades, San Francisco and its metropolitan area have become the technological heart of the world. South of the city, in the region known as Silicon Valley (the Santa Clara valley, with towns such as Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino and San Jose), the largest concentration of technology and innovation companies on the planet grew from the second half of the 20th century onward, driven by elite universities (such as Stanford), venture capital and a unique ecosystem of talent and entrepreneurship. Many of the most influential companies in computing, the internet and technology were born or grew up there.
The city of San Francisco itself, especially from the beginning of the 21st century, also became a tech epicenter, home to giants of social media, apps and the digital economy, many of which were born or set up in its neighborhoods. That tech boom drew an enormous amount of professionals and capital, generating great economic prosperity but also sharp tensions: housing costs shot up to among the highest levels in the country, worsening inequality and visible social problems such as homelessness.
Today San Francisco is a city of contrasts: one of the richest, most innovative and most influential in the world, an engine of the digital era, and at the same time a city facing the challenges that come from that very success. But it keeps intact what makes it unique: its incomparable beauty of hills, fog and bay; its golden bridge; its neighborhoods with character; its open, diverse and creative spirit; and that special charm that makes it, for many, the most beloved city in the United States.