San Francisco City Hall re-opened in 1915, in its open space area in the city's Civic Center, is a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the 1880s to 1917. The structure's dome is the fifth largest in the world. The principal architect was Arthur Brown, Jr., of Bakewell & Brown, whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs and the typeface to be used in signage. The building as a whole contains some 7,900 tons of structural steel. It is faced with Madera County granite on the exterior, and Indiana sandstone within, together with finish marbles from Alabama, Colorado, Vermont, and Italy. Much of the statuary is by Henri Crenier.

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a museum in San Francisco, California, United States. It has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world. The collection has approximately 17,000 works of art and artifacts from all major Asian countries and traditions, some of which are as much as 6,000 years old. Major galleries are devoted to the arts of South Asia, West Asia, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, China, Korea and Japan. There are 2,500 works on display in the permanent collection. The museum has become a focus for special and traveling exhibitions.

Metreon is a shopping center located in downtown San Francisco. It is a four-story building built over the corner of the underground Moscone Center convention center. Metreon opened on June 16, 1999 as an entertainment center, the first of a proposed chain of Sony urban centers aggregating dining, gaming, music, exhibitions, shopping, and movies. In 2006 Metreon was sold and it has been refashioned as a food-oriented mall. The Metreon 13, an IMAX 3D movie theater operated by AMC Lowes Cineplex, is currently the most popular attraction. Additionally, the second floor is home to a TILT arcade and coin-operated games.

Union Square is a 2.6 acres (11,000 m2) plaza bordered by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California. Today, this one-block plaza and nearby area is one of the largest collections of department stores, upscale boutiques, tourist trinket shops, art galleries, and salons in the Western United States, which continue to make Union Square a major tourist draw, a vital, cosmopolitan place in downtown San Francisco, and one of the world's premier shopping districts. Grand hotels and small inns, as well as repertory, off-Broadway, and single-act theaters also contribute to the area's dynamic, 24-hour character.

San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of "the largest Chinese communities outside Asia". Since its establishment in the 1840s, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants to the United States and North America. In addition to it being a starting point and home for thousands of Chinese immigrants, it is also a major tourist attraction- as its shops, restaurants, and attractions draw more visitors annually to the neighborhood than the Golden Gate Bridge.

Grace Cathedral is an Episcopal cathedral located on Nob Hill in San Francisco. Its ancestral parish, Grace Church, was founded in 1849 during the California Gold Rush.  Designed in French Gothic style by Lewis P. Hobart, it was completed in 1964 as the third largest Episcopal cathedral in the nation. The cathedral has become an international pilgrimage center for church-goers and visitors alike, famed for its mosaics by De Rosen, a replica of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, two labyrinths, varied stained glass windows, Keith Haring AIDS Chapel altarpiece, and medieval and contemporary furnishings, as well as its 44 bell carillon, three organs, and choirs.

Nob Hill refers to a neighborhood in San Francisco, California centered on the intersection of California and Powell streets. It is one of San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills." Nob Hill is an affluent district, home to many of the city's upper class families as well as a large young urban professional population, as well as an growing Chinese immigrant population from a slowly encroaching Chinatown to the east. The intersection of California and Powell streets is the location of its four well-known and most expensive hotels: the Fairmont Hotel, the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Stanford Court, and the Huntington Hotel. Interestingly, they represent also three names out of the The Big Four.

The Cable Car Museum is a free museum in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco,California. The museum was established in 1974, and is run by the Friends of the Cable Car Museum. The museum contains several examples of old cable cars, together with smaller exhibits and a shop. The museum is part of the complex that also houses the cable car power house, which drives the cables, and the car depot. The car depot is not accessible, but two overlook galleries allow the visitor to view both the power house, and also to descend below the junction of Washington and Mason streets in order to view the large cavern where the haulage cables are routed out to the street.

The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest and most recognizable skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline. Although the building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, it is still strongly associated with the company and is depicted in the company's logo. Designed by architect William Pereira, at 260 m (850 ft), upon completion it was among the 5 tallest buildings in the world. The building is a tall, four-sided pyramid with two "wings" on either side to accommodate an elevator shaft on the east and a stairwell and a smoke tower on the west. The building's façade is covered in crushed quartz, giving the building its pure white color.

Coit Tower was built in Pioneer Park atop Telegraph Hill in 1933. The tower offers fantastic views of San Francisco. The art deco tower, 210 feet (64 m) of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard with murals by 26 different artists and numerous assistants The Coit Tower murals were carried out under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal federal employment programs for artists. Two of the murals are of San Francisco Bay scenes. Most murals are done in fresco; the exceptions are one mural done in egg tempera and the works done in the elevator foyer, which are oil on canvas.

Saints Peter and Paul Church is a Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. Located (somewhat ironically) at 666 Filbert Street, it is directly across from Washington Square, San Francisco and is administered by the Salesians of Don Bosco. It is known as "The Italian Cathedral of the West," and has served as the home church and cultural center for San Francisco's Italian-American community since its consecration. More recently, it has also become the home church for the city's Chinese-American Catholic population. The church is prominently featured in the Clint Eastwood movies Dirty Harry and The Dead Pool.

Lombard Street is an east-west street in San Francisco, California. Lombard Street is best known for the one-way section on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, in which the roadway has eight sharp turns (or switchbacks) that have earned the street the distinction of being the crookedest street in the world. The switchback's design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and instituted in 1922, was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural 27% grade, which was too steep for most vehicles to climb. Famous past residents of Lombard Street include Rowena Meeks Abdy, an early California painter who worked in the style of Impressionism.