Things to do / Travel Guide
Address:34th Avenue & Clement St.
San Francisco, California
Tel:
(415) 863-3330
Spend an afternoon enjoying 4,000 years of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from Europe! Feast your eyes on international tapestries, prints, and drawings and one of the world's finest collections of Rodin sculptures!
Designed as a memorial to California's World War I casualties, this neoclassical structure is an exact replica of the Legion of Honor Palace in Paris, and has a permanent collection which covers 4,000 years of art. The building is a three-quarters scale imitation of the Legion of Honor Palace in Paris, based on a model of the Hôtel de Salm that appeared at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition and home to one of the world's finest collections of Rodin sculptures, that includes including "The Thinker" in the forecourt.
The collection is mainly European art, the largest portion of which is French, and includes individual works by François Boucher, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, David, El Greco, Rubens, and many of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists such as Degas, Renoir, and Monet. 20th century figures are also represented, such as Braque and Picasso, and works of contemporary artists such as Gottfried Helnwein and Robert Crumb are also showcased.
Visitors can enjoy audio tours and group tours for adults (which must be scheduled at least 3 weeks in advance). Should you get hungry, enjoy a coffee break, lunch, or afternoon tea at the Legion of Honor Cafe and Garden Terrace, with spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean. Whatever your artistic fancy, do plan to spend 2 or 3 hours at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the time you'll need to take it all in. The museum is accessible via bus lines #18, #38, #1, and #2.