Mission Dolores

The sixth of 21 California missions built along El Camino Real (the King's Highway), Mission Dolores has withstood two major earthquakes - in 1906 and 1989 - to take the title of San Francisco’s oldest building. The old church is all that remains of the original 1776 Catholic compound and almost everything in the interior is original, including the beautifully patterned redwood ceiling beams and ornate Mexican altars. At the mission you’ll also find a small museum and a cemetery (one of only two remaining in the San Francisco city limits) which holds the remains of notable Spanish settlers, the city’s first mayor and the unmarked mass grave of thousands of Native Americans. Film buffs will get a kick out of seeing the grave visited by an entranced Kim Novak in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.