Founded in 1772 by Padre Junípero Serra, Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is the fifth of California's 21 missions and the one that gave this city its name. It still functions as a parish church, which means the interior is not a museum piece — people actually attend mass here, and the scale is intimate and human rather than monumental.
The mission faces Mission Plaza, a small park along San Luis Creek where locals sit and eat lunch, and where the Farmers Market sets up on Thursday evenings. The church itself is free to enter during opening hours. The small museum adjacent to the church documents the Chumash people who lived in the area before the mission's founding and the history of the mission itself — it's modest but genuine, and worth twenty minutes if you want context. The mission garden is peaceful and well kept.
The bell tower is the most photographed part of the exterior. Ringing the original bells, which hang in a separate campanario rather than the tower, was a significant occasion in mission life — they called the community to mass, announced births, deaths, and festivals, and served as the town clock. Two of the original bells survive.