Nob Hill is San Francisco at its grandest. In the late 19th century the "nobs" — the railroad and silver barons who made colossal fortunes in the Gold Rush boom — built mansions on this steep hilltop, drawn by the views and the social distance from the city below. The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed almost all of them, but the address kept its cachet, and the survivors and successors are the luxury hotels that define the hill today: the Fairmont, the Mark Hopkins, the Huntington.
The crown of the neighbourhood is Grace Cathedral, a French Gothic Episcopal cathedral with a walkable labyrinth and bronze doors cast from Ghiberti's Florence originals, facing the manicured Huntington Park. Cable cars grind up all three flanks of the hill — this is the "cable cars climbing halfway to the stars" of the song — and the Cable Car Museum nearby houses the working powerhouse that pulls them. Come for the views, a drink at Top of the Mark, and a sense of old San Francisco money.