This contorting sculpture is the tallest in San Francisco.

An elaborate gift from Claus Spreckels is now a piece of San Francisco history.

Alleyway plaque commemorating the death of a fictional character in The Maltese Falcon, not far from the author's home.

A pair of mutilated bronze octopuses slump at the base of the monument honoring California's admission to the U.S.

Longtime headquarters of controversial boys' club for the world's wealthiest and most powerful.

The remains of a 12th-century chapter house in Golden Gate Park.

An overlooked and unassuming engineering marvel.

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

The giant pair of sexy legs sticking out the window of this costume store have become its main draw.

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

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

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

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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

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

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

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.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

An eerie diorama that captures the majestic nature of a few prehistoric-looking beasts.

This taxidermy scene brings the struggle for survival in the Indian jungle to a quiet corner of a Manhattan museum.

This poignant display is now a memorial to these regionally extinct species.