Meandering the Marina, you'll pass Mexican-inspired art deco buildings, Victorian mansions, generic bay-windowed boxes – and, hello, what's this? A riotous 1905 mishmash of architectural styles, with red turrets representing major world religions and the Hindu-inspired Vedanta Society's organizing principle: 'the oneness of existence.' The society founded a new temple in 1959, but its original architectural conundrum remains – the only thing missing is a finger pointing at the moon.
Vedanta Society
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
3.25 MILES
When Frederick Law Olmsted, architect of New York's Central Park, gazed in 1865 upon the plot of land San Francisco Mayor Frank McCoppin wanted to turn…
2.08 MILES
Was it the fall of 1966 or the winter of ’67? As the Haight saying goes, if you can remember the Summer of Love, you probably weren’t here. The fog was…
1.48 MILES
If you look close today at the clinker-brick buildings lining these narrow backstreets, past the temple balconies jutting out over bakeries, acupuncture…
1.5 MILES
No one could have predicted the cultural force City Lights would become when it first opened in 1953. Sure, it had a proletarian ethos suggested by its…
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
2 MILES
When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expanded in 2016, it was a mind-boggling feat that nearly tripled the institution's size to accommodate a…
1.58 MILES
If you want to really see San Francisco, head to Coit Tower, a 1933 art deco beaut designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard that sits high up on…
2.57 MILES
Few cities boast a structure so iconic as the Golden Gate Bridge, commemorated in everything from films like The Maltese Falcon to not one but two emojis…
2.67 MILES
Welcome to San Francisco's sunny side, the land of street ball and Mayan-pyramid playgrounds, semiprofessional tanning and taco picnics. Although the…
Nearby The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers attractions
1. Church of St Mary the Virgin
0.2 MILES
You'd expect to see this rustic Arts and Crafts–style building on the slopes of Tahoe, not Pacific Heights, but this Episcopal church is full of surprises…
0.37 MILES
Crafty architects are always trying to cut corners on clients, and architect William C McElroy has done so splendidly with this house. This is among the…
3. Lombard Financial Center Mosaics
0.58 MILES
A couple years ago, blighted trees in front of this bank were cut down and a treasure hidden for almost half a century was revealed: mosaics by California…
0.61 MILES
If these red-velvet parlor walls could talk this 1886 Queen Anne–style Victorian could tell you about earthquakes, booms, busts and untimely deaths. This…
0.63 MILES
San Francisco takes subversive glee in turning military installations into venues for nature, fine dining and out-there experimental art. Evidence: Fort…
0.66 MILES
A quiet alternative to adjacent Lyon St's social and fitness scene, Baker St's 200 steep, narrow steps between Broadway and Vallejo St are dense with…
0.74 MILES
Two blocks of Lyon St, between Broadway and Green St, are flanked by forests and glamorous mansions – including Senator Dianne Feinstein's – and offer jaw…
0.78 MILES
'Homeward into the sunset/Still unwearied we go/Till the northern hills are misty/With the amber of afterglow.' Poet George Sterling's poem 'City by the…