Fog and Foreigners
In 1848, things looked a lot different from the top of the hill where Coit Tower stands today. There was no bridge; there was no city. Discover how the arrival of a million immigrants from around the globe transformed Yerba Buena into San Francisco — fighting exclusion and discrimination, creating community, and shaping this City of Immigrants.
Step into history with us
This is a free, self-guided audio tour that circles Coit Tower, at the top of Telegraph Hill. Tap a number on the map above to get started.
You can turn on geolocation using the pin icon on the map and each story will open automatically when you are in the right spot.
Learn More
Tour Stops
1. Alcatraz and Angel Island / Stolen Land
2. Golden Gate Bridge / A Golden Gate
3. North Beach / Little Italy
4. Garfield Elementary School / New Americans
5. Downtown / Phoenix City
6. East Bay / Cities of Immigrants
7. Pier 29 / Chinese Exclusion
8. Central Plinth / Christopher Columbus
9. Where We Find Ourselves / Sculpture by Lauren Bartone
10. The Italians of San Francisco / Film by Davide Fiore
Tips & Accessibility
This tour is free.
For the best neighborhood experience, fully charge your phone or tablet and bring headphones. The tour requires access to cellular phone data or an internet connection. WiFi may not be available.
Timing & Access
- You can listen to each stop individually, or as a collection in order from 1-10.
- The complete tour takes 25 minutes. The distance traveled is approximately 0.2 miles, and is mostly flat (total elevation change 10ft).
- Audio transcripts for this tour are available as a PDF download.
- This tour was created in April 2026. While we make an effort to keep things current, you are walking through a living neighborhood and sometimes things change. Be curious, and embrace the unexpected.
Reinterpreting History
In recent years, monuments commemorating Christopher Columbus have become flashpoints throughout the United States, as activists across the political spectrum question whose voices should be telling American history – and what place immigration holds in that story. In San Francisco a statue of Christopher Columbus stood outside Coit Tower from 1957 until 2020, when the monument was removed by the City.
As part of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Shaping Legacy project critically examining the monuments in SF’s Civic Art collection, the California Migration Museum facilitated a community engagement process to reinterpret the complex and multilayered immigration history connected to both the statue and the Telegraph Hill area.
Lauren Bartone’s Where We Find Ourselves, and David Fiore’s The Italians of San Francisco (below) are artist activations informed by this community feedback.
Where We Find Ourselves
Cloud Monument Sculpture & Illustrated Map
Lauren Bartone, Artist
Where We Find Ourselves questions ideas of centering and navigation to reflect the complex range of migration experiences that have passed through the former site of the Columbus monument. The creative activation is realized in two parts: a sculpture and an illustrated print map.
Cloud Monument is a soft sculpture of interconnected cloud forms made from sewn linen shapes colored with natural cochineal, indigo, weld and alkanet dyes — materials that reflect ongoing historical exchanges of ideas, traditions, and cultures.
Where We Find Ourselves is a hand-drawn and illustrated map. It orients the viewer from the top of Coit Tower, with the plinth of the former Columbus monument in the foreground, and other key sites that reflect San Francisco migration histories, such as the Embarcadero and Angel Island, in the middle and background.
Lauren Bartone is an Italian American artist who works in an interdisciplinary balance of painting, community dialogue, and archival research. Her community based and collaborative mapping projects include A City in Maps (2015) produced as the artist in residence at the de Young Museum of Art in San Francisco, and SF New City Atlas for the ‘Art on Market Street’ poster series with the San Francisco Arts Council. She is a current PhD candidate in the Italian Studies Department at UC Berkeley.
The Italians of San Francisco
360 Short Film
Davide Fiore, Filmmaker
The Columbus statue formerly installed at Coit Tower held special significance to many Italian Americans. For them, rather than representing the pain and trauma of colonial invasion, Columbus symbolized the Italian story within American history, after decades of marginalization.
The Italians of San Francisco is a short four-minute immersive film that brings to life the rich history of San Francisco’s Italian American community, from the earliest Gold Rush settlers to new Silicon Valley arrivals.
Davide Fiore is an Italian native who has lived in California since 2017. Fiore’s 2024 documentary, A Little Fellow: The Legacy of A.P. Giannini, received the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the Cinequest 2025 and Dances With Films Festival 2025, one of Los Angeles’ premier independent film festivals, the Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival 2025 and was previously honored with the Best International Docufilm Award at the Coliseum International Film Festival 2024 in Rome.
Click on the movie icon below to enjoy this film in immersive 360. Depending on network and device, the film may take up to 20 seconds to load. Or watch via You Tube below.
Click on the map icon to experience Davide Fiore's film in 360. Depending on your device and network, it may take up to 15 seconds to load. Or watch below.
