One part local history, 99 parts gruesome haunted house.

The only university zoological museum in London houses extinct animals, bizarre natural history specimens, and a Micrarium of microscopic creatures.

This ornate Victorian marketplace was the setting for Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron in the Harry Potter films.

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

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

These WWII-era murals were initially booed as a libelous portrayal of the American dream but have survived multiple attempts to have them destroyed.

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

Depicting scenes of everyday life - and specific individuals - in Great Depression era San Francisco.

Guns that have been defending San Francisco since 1904.

A masterpiece in Golden Gate Park by virtue of the artist’s debt.

Forgotten and then destroyed by fire, this was once one of the largest saltwater swimming pools in the world.

Adolph Sutro's little-known, geographically inaccurate, deprecated monument.

Half of a house.

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

A monument to the love people have for their pets.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

This turn of the century masterpiece has a mysterious goaty interloper.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

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

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