Coit Tower is a wonderful place to get a great view of the city. Jason thinks the city looks so peaceful from here.

Don't just park and admire the view! Get out and walk around, there are paths that take you around the base of the tower, and the views are wonderful.

The website coittower.org says it's open everyday from 10am to 5pm, but on Valentine's Day it was open until at least 6pm. I don't think the website is kept up-to-date. The murals on the first floor are great, painted in the Italian fresco style by WPA artists. They are very vibrant, and run the entire length of the bottom of the tower on both walls.

It was $4 for adults to take the elevator to the top, cash only. There is an ATM, but there's a $2.50 fee. There are stairs to the top, but I believe that you can no longer use them. There is a gift shop, restrooms, and a snack truck.

There is very limited parking up at the top. There is a a MUNI bus that goes up there, it's #39 and it leaves from Washington Square about every 20 minutes.

Coit Tower murals on the 1st floor are available to view for free, murals on the 2nd floor are available for viewing Saturdays 11am or by appointment, and the elevator ride to the top is three dollars. Extremely limited parking is available. You'll get a wonderful panoramic view of the city. Walking up the steep-angled Filbert Street will lead you here if you have the health stamina for it.

Daily 10am-5pm

Phone: (415) 362-0808

Muni 39

Coit Tower and San Francisco’s Parrots

Take a walk to the top of Telegraph Hill for the view and check out Coit Tower… but make sure you walk down the Filbert Street steps to see the wild parrots too.

There’s a statue of Christopher Columbus and nice views from the top of Telegraph Hill. The view’s even better from Coit Tower, but the fee keeps going up, and I don’t feel it’s worth the $5 to go to the top. If you’re around while the tower is open, wander in and inspect the interesting Depression-era murals on the ground-floor walls. There’s no charge to look around.

After getting your fill of scenery and art, head down the Filbert Street steps. It’s nice enough—a steep walkway down the hill with plantings on either side, and with any luck, you’ll run into the parrots. The parrots are famous and have been subjects of both a book, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, by Mark Bittner, and a documentary film of the same name. Yet many people in the city don’t know they exist! These cherry-headed conures, often called Christmas parrots, are about a foot long, with iridescent green bodies and red heads. The flock may have begun with a small number of escaped birds or birds released by their owners, but it’s now up to well over 100 birds. They survive year-round in San Francisco, ranging from the Presidio and Fort Mason to Washington Square and Telegraph Hill.

They squawk loudly, so you’re likely to hear them before you see them. Listen for them, then stop and wait. They’re hard to spot among the leaves, but with any luck, something will spook them, and the whole flock will fly off at once. When the sun’s right, it’s spectacular: a noisy explosion of shiny green confetti, blasted out of the trees into the blue sky.

The parrots do make their rounds about the city, so you may miss them. Keep listening, and you may find them in one of San Francisco’s other parks.

Perched on the summit of Telegraph Hill is the Coit Tower, a landmark constructed using a bequest to the City and County of San Francisco by Lillie Hitchcock Coit. Coit, a widow without children, specified in her will that two-thirds of her estate go to the Universities of California and Maryland, and the remaining one-third go to the City and County of San Francisco to beautify her favorite city.

After Coit's death, a design competition was held to determine the form of the memorial. The winning design was a tower to be constructed in Pioneer Park at the top of Telegraph Hill. The tower was dedicated in October 1933.

At the time that the tower's physical structure was completed, the building was largely without adornment. The original plan for the tower had included a restaurant, but, during the construction of the tower, the restaurant idea was dropped in favor of using the space at the base of the tower for exhibitions depicting San Francisco's pioneer days. Two months after the tower's dedication, a New Deal program was launched to hire artists to adorn public buildings in the area and a plan was developed to paint the interior walls of the tower with murals. By January 1934, a team of 26 artists were at work covering the interior walls of the tower with frescoes. Several months later, controversy arose over the content of some of the murals, which celebrated industrial and agricultural working men and women, and including some symbols that were considered to embrace the ideals of communism. These symbols were eventually replaced by other subjects, and the completed murals were revealed to the public in October 1934.

Today tourists flock to the tower to see the artwork inside of it, and for a $3 elevator ride to the observation deck on top of the tower. The view from the tower is stunning. Already perched on top of a hill, the tower provides a great vantage point for seeing across the bay to the East Bay cities, Marin County to the north, the Golden Gate Bridge, Pacific Ocean to the west, and the city itself surrounding the tower.

Getting to the Coit Tower is easiest by taking the no. 39 Muni bus or walking. Parking at the top of the hill is very limited. The walk up Telegraph Hill is steep and can be exhausting, but on nice days the views are incredible and worth the effort. If you do take the bus to the top of the tower, I recommend walking back down, using one of several public stairways that descend the hill from the tower. My favorite is the Filbert Steps, which descends through the trees (watch for the wild parrot flock that lives here) past houses (some reachable only by the steps), flower gardens, and Napier Lane, the last of the city's wooden plank streets, to Levi's Plaza and the Embarcadero.

More information on the tower is available on the Coit Tower website.

Coit Tower's breathtaking panoramic view never ceases to amaze me. Located near the historic North Beach area, it is a must see. I would recommend going at night, even thought the small museum is closed. It tends to get overrun with tourist groups during the day and the view is much more stunning at night, with the city lights twinkling in the background. Bring some friends and a coat, and hike up the giant hill . . . you probably won't be able to find parking anywhere near it, but it's a fun walk. It's very romantic, so be prepared to find canoodling couples enjoying the scene.