Barely visible foundations remain where Stow Lake’s “observatory” once welcomed visitors.

A garden oasis filled with flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.

The stones that traveled from Spain to eventually become a holy place for San Francisco's nature worshippers.

A pair of slides and a tree-lined stair corridor have been an urban oasis for nearly 40 years.

A tiny theater hidden in an alley plays a constant stream of short silent films for anyone willing to peer through the peephole.

Built in 1906, this unique building was the first Hindu temple in the United States.

A brooding mansion of clinker brick stands out among the Victorian houses of Pacific Heights.

This 19th-century church is now a popular roller rink.

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

The tea room that pushed the boundaries of adorable straight into...we can't find the words.

The oldest dim sum restaurant in the United States is a nostalgic jewel.

The randomness of this wall of lava lamps helps encrypt up to 10 percent of the internet.

One of the oldest producers of hand-folded fortune cookies still uses its original secret recipe.

One of the last remnants of the city's Chinese nightclub scene is now a dive bar selling killer mai tais.

America's oldest Italian restaurant is a San Francisco institution.

The first fresco Diego Rivera painted in the United States can be found in the former San Francisco Stock Exchange.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

With the touch of a button, you can read a randomly selected short story.

A collection of memorabilia from the Beat era in the back of a San Francisco bookstore.

Gold Rush ship-turned-hotel buried underneath San Francisco's financial district.

Odd stone and concrete monuments in the "Poet of the Sierras" eclectic folly garden.

The oldest alley in San Francisco is paved with a reminder of the city's original shoreline.

The largest whiskey stash on the West Coast survived the 1906 fires--but not without heroic effort.

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.