San Francisco is a major city in California, USA, with about 826,000 people in the city and more than 4.5 million in the wider metro area. Founded by Spanish settlers in 1776 around the Presidio and Mission San Francisco de Asís, it grew from a small colonial outpost into a Gold Rush boomtown and later one of the West Coast’s most important ports, finance centres and cultural cities. Today San Francisco is best known for the Golden Gate Bridge, steep streets, cable cars, fog, Victorian houses, Chinatown, counterculture history and its role in the wider Bay Area tech economy. Key sights include Alcatraz Island, Fisherman’s Wharf, North Beach, the Mission District, Golden Gate Park, the Painted Ladies and the waterfront along the Embarcadero. The city also has a deep music history, from 1960s psychedelic rock to punk, metal and underground scenes in neighbourhoods such as the Mission and SoMa. Getting in and around is straightforward via San Francisco International Airport, Oakland Airport, BART, Muni, ferries and regional rail, though the hills and microclimates make planning by neighbourhood useful.

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