Fodor's Expert Review Mission Dolores
Two churches stand side by side here: a newer multi-domed basilica and the small adobe Mission San Francisco de Asís, the latter being the city's oldest standing structure along with the Presidio Officers' Club. Completed in 1791, it's the sixth of the 21 California missions founded by Franciscan friars in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Its ceiling depicts original Ohlone Indian basket designs, executed in vegetable dyes. The tiny chapel includes frescoes and a hand-painted wooden altar.
There's a hidden treasure here: a 20-by-22-foot mural with images including a dagger-pierced Sacred Heart of Jesus, painted with natural dyes by Native Americans in 1791, was found in 2004 behind the altar. Interesting fact: Mission San Francisco de Asís was founded on June 29, 1776, five days before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The small museum in the mission complex covers its founding and history, and the pretty cemetery—which appears in Alfred Hitchcock's film... READ MORE
Two churches stand side by side here: a newer multi-domed basilica and the small adobe Mission San Francisco de Asís, the latter being the city's oldest standing structure along with the Presidio Officers' Club. Completed in 1791, it's the sixth of the 21 California missions founded by Franciscan friars in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Its ceiling depicts original Ohlone Indian basket designs, executed in vegetable dyes. The tiny chapel includes frescoes and a hand-painted wooden altar.
There's a hidden treasure here: a 20-by-22-foot mural with images including a dagger-pierced Sacred Heart of Jesus, painted with natural dyes by Native Americans in 1791, was found in 2004 behind the altar. Interesting fact: Mission San Francisco de Asís was founded on June 29, 1776, five days before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The small museum in the mission complex covers its founding and history, and the pretty cemetery—which appears in Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo—contains the graves of mid-19th-century European immigrants. The remains of an estimated 5,000 Native Americans who died at the mission lie in unmarked graves.
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