San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
ExperienceSoMa#25 of 50

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco, California

Photo: David Zhou

SFMOMA's 2016 expansion tripled the gallery space and made it one of the largest modern art museums in the country. The photography collection is world-class, the Fisher Collection fills entire floors with blue-chip contemporary work, and the living wall on the third-floor terrace is a vertical garden that stops you mid-step. Free to the public on the first floor — including a Richard Serra you can walk through.

Insider tip

Start on the first floor for free — the Serra sculpture and the rotating installations are worth the visit alone. Then buy a ticket and head up.

Learn More
See all 50 picks in San Francisco

More in San Francisco

You might also like

Tartine Bakery
CoffeeMission District

Tartine Bakery

The line out the door at 18th and Guerrero is a San Francisco institution for a reason. Chad Robertson's bread changed the way a generation thinks about flour and water, and the morning bun — caramelized orange sugar, shatteringly crisp — is the single best pastry in the city. The space is tiny. The wait is real. None of that matters once you're holding that first bite.

Zuni Café
EatHayes Valley

Zuni Café

The roast chicken for two at Zuni is the most famous dish in San Francisco, and it deserves every word ever written about it. Order it first — it takes an hour — then eat the Caesar and oysters while you wait. The copper bar is one of the great seats in American dining. Judy Rodgers built this place, and even after her passing it remains immaculate.

City Lights Booksellers
ShopNorth Beach

City Lights Booksellers

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cathedral of independent thought has been on Columbus Avenue since 1953. The poetry room upstairs is sacred ground — a low-ceilinged space with a sign that reads 'I sit here and am content.' The curated shelves are still defiantly literary, political, and strange in the best way. This is not a bookstore. It's a manifesto with a cash register.

Experience picks elsewhere

More experience we love

ExperienceHighland Park · Los Angeles, California

Watts Towers

Seventeen interconnected sculptural towers built by one man — Simon Rodia — over 33 years using steel, mortar, and found objects. Bottle caps, broken tiles, seashells, pottery shards — all assembled into soaring spires that reach nearly 100 feet. It's outsider art at its most monumental, a UNESCO-recognized folk art masterpiece, and one of the most extraordinary things any single person has ever built. Nothing else in LA is like it.

ExperienceQueen Anne · Seattle, Washington

Chihuly Garden and Glass

Dale Chihuly is Seattle's artist laureate, and this permanent installation at the base of the Space Needle is his masterwork. The Glasshouse alone — a 40-foot structure filled with a suspended red-and-orange sculpture — justifies the admission. The outdoor garden, where blown glass erupts from beds of flowers and native plantings, is genuinely otherworldly. Even the cynics leave impressed.