Prominent Places
Union Square, which is adjoined by the St. Francis Hotel and many fine shops and stores, is the focus of downtown San Francisco. To the north, centered on Grant Avenue, is Chinatown, home to one of the largest Chinese communities outside the Far East. In the neighborhood are clustered hundreds of restaurants, food stores, and shops featuring Oriental wares.
On nearby Nob Hill, where the mansions of San Francisco's wealthiest families once stood, are Grace Cathedral and several of the city's finest hotels. Farther north is Russian Hill, capped by high-rise apartment buildings; to the east is Telegraph Hill, with its 210-foot (64-m) Coit Memorial Tower. Between the two hills lies the North Beach district, a predominantly Italian area and one of the chief centers of the city's nightlife.
On San Francisco's north shore stands the restored Palace of the Legion of Honor, a fine arts museum in the only remaining building of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. To the east are a yacht harbor, several small parks, Ghirardelli Square, the Cannery, and Fisherman's Wharf. Ghirardelli Square (a former chocolate factory) and the Cannery (a former fruit-canning plant) house a wide variety of restaurants and specialty shops. At Fisherman's Wharf, seafood is featured in numerous restaurants and sidewalk stalls. Nearby at the Hyde Street Pier the three-masted sailing ship Balclutha is permanently moored. A short distance offshore is Alcatraz Island, site of a former federal prison.
About midway along Market Street is the Civic Center, a complex of government and public buildings built largely in Italian Renaissance style The city hall, main public library, civic auditorium, symphony hall, and opera house are here.
One of San Francisco's outstanding features is Golden Gate Park, more than three miles (5 km) long and with an area of some 1,000 acres (400 hectares) It contains a great variety of attractions, including two museums of fine art, a planetarium, an aquarium, an arboretum, and a conservatory.
Most of the northern and western coastal areas of San Francisco are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park System Included in the recreational area are several long beaches, a promenade, and such historic places as Fort Point, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz Island Seal Rocks, also a part of the recreational area, is a gathering place for hundreds of California sea lions.
Mission Dolores, in the Mission District northeast of Twin Peaks, is an adobe structure built by the Spanish as the Mission San Francisco de Asís shortly after they established their presidio (military post) in 1776 On the east side of the city is 3Com Park, home of the San Francisco Forty-Niners (football), and Pacific Bell Park, home of the San Francisco Giants (baseball).
