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

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

This shop specializes in oddities and Victorian-inspired wonders.

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

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

An artsy hidden staircase leads to breathtaking views of San Francisco.