United States · California · San Francisco
Chinatown, San Francisco — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Chinatown is the oldest Chinese enclave in North America and the dense heart of that community in San Francisco. Its two dozen blocks climb the lower slopes between the Financial District and Nob Hill, split down the middle by touristic Grant Avenue and workaday Stockton Street. Markets, temples, and family associations crowd the lanes between them. Portsmouth Square, often called the city's birthplace, anchors its eastern side.
About Chinatown
Where to stay in Chinatown
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Few hotels sit inside the neighborhood itself. Most visitors base themselves a short walk away around Union Square or in the Financial District, then cross into the lanes on foot for markets, temples, and dim sum. Staying here puts you steps from Old Saint Mary's Cathedral and the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, with the cable-car lines climbing Powell Street toward Nob Hill.
The quarter rewards sightseeing and eating over late nightlife, which clusters north in North Beach. For a wider choice of rooms, the rest of San Francisco is a cable-car or taxi ride away.
About Chinatown
What are the main landmarks in Chinatown?
Its own landmarks cluster to the south. Old Saint Mary's Cathedral rises where Grant Avenue crosses California Street, and the San Francisco Comfort Women Memorial stands in a small park just uphill from it. A few blocks northwest, the San Francisco Cable Car Museum houses the powerhouse that still hauls the city's cable lines.
Just outside its edges lie more: Notre-Dame-des-Victoires on Bush Street, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill to the northeast, and Saints Peter and Paul Church on the North Beach square beyond Broadway. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco sits a short ride south at the Civic Center.
What is the history of Chinatown?
The word describes an ethnic Chinese enclave set outside China, and San Francisco holds the oldest such quarter in North America, dating to the mid-nineteenth century. Chinese laborers and merchants arrived with the California Gold Rush and settled along Dupont Street, later renamed Grant Avenue. Fire after the 1906 earthquake leveled it.
Merchants rebuilt the quarter within a few years in a deliberately Chinese-influenced style that drew sightseers and anchored the community against pressure to move it elsewhere in San Francisco. Old Saint Mary's Cathedral, built before the fire and restored after, still stands at Grant Avenue and California Street.
Where is Chinatown?
The quarter sits just northwest of the Financial District, on the lower flank of Nob Hill and a few blocks uphill from the waterfront of San Francisco. Broadway opens north into North Beach. Bush Street closes the southern edge near Union Square, where a ceremonial dragon gate marks the foot of Grant Avenue.
Kearny Street and Powell Street bound its eastern and western sides.
Good for
More areas in San Francisco
Updated July 2026