With more than 600 murals, the streets of San Francisco are a parade of vibrant and radiant

murals that are painted on walls and facades of buildings, fences, garage doors and

further. The colorful Mission District is the epicenter of San Francisco’s murals with the

largest concentration of murals in San Francisco. discovering

murals in the Mission District of San Francisco is discovering the hopes and

passions, joys and tribulations of the people.

The Mission San Francisco neighborhood’s love affair with the murals stems from the

Mexican roots from the Mission District community. The Latino community began to

move to the Mission neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1970s,

Resident muralists began to follow the traditions of the great muralists of the

1920s and 1930s, perhaps the most famous of which was Diego Rivera.

The Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitor Center (located at 2981 24th Street) is a

great place to start your exploration of the murals at Mission San Francisco

neighborhood. The Precita Eyes Visitor Center offers three guided tours of the murals in

Saturday and Sunday between $10 and $12 per adult. You can arrange in private

group the wall towers in advance. In addition, the Precita Eyes Visitor Center has a

Mission wall map of almost 90 murals that you can use to explore the

neighborhood on your own.

Mural-themed items such as postcards, candles,

posters and books. Precita Eyes also sells wall art supplies in case you are

inspired to paint your own personal mural on your living room wall. For more

information, contact Precita Eyes at http://www.precitaeyes.org/ or (415)

285-2287.

Located one block from Precita Eyes between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street, Balmy

Alley has a concentration of more than 30 vivid murals painted on fences, buildings

walls and garage doors. In the mural-dense neighborhood, Balmy

Alley is in the center of everything. Muralists began work on San Francisco’s Balmy Alley

as early as 1971. Many of the original murals are still there, as are many murals

which have been painted in the intervening years.

The Balmy Alley murals are highly diverse in both style and subject matter.

Some of the murals feature cartoon illustrations that are playful and youthful. other

Murals along Balmy Alley tackle difficult subjects, such as a monument to

people who have died of AIDS or representations of political conflicts and wars in Latin America

America. Another mural honors the great muralist Diego Rivera and his wife, the

painter Frida Kahlo. And another is a tribute to the women muralists of the Mission

District. A colorless mural shows two men and a woman jumping across a

barbed wire fence full of keys. The woman holds her hand up, making the

Peace sign.

Elsewhere in the Mission District on Harrison on 19th Street, mingled between blocks of

warehouses and running along a wall for nearly a block in Mission San Francisco

In the neighborhood there is a mural titled “Carnaval”. As its name indicates, the Carnival mural

is a representation of the celebration of Carnival, a multicultural dance and music

festival that has its roots in Latin America and the Caribbean. the san francisco

The Mission District has been hosting a Carnival Festival since 1978. Created in 1994 by

Josué Sarantitis, Emmanuel Montoya, Carlos Loarca and others, the radiant

The carnival mural is as dynamic and colorful as the party it represents.

The Women’s Building (located at 3543 18th Street) features two walls of a spectacular

mural that pays homage to women. Created by a team of seven women muralists,

the mural “Maestrapeace” portrays women and female archetypes of multiple

origins of the world The Goddess of Light and Creativity adorns the upper part of Calle 18

façade with the waters of life flowing under it and transforming into cloth

designs from around the world.

The mural features such notable women as Georgia O’Keefe (an American innovator

artist) and Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemalan of Mayan descent and Nobel Prize-

winning activist). The names of many more famous women are inscribed on the

colorful mural patterns. The mural is meant to be inspirational and educational,

illustrating the contributions women have made to human history and society.

The Women’s Building provides resources and services to organizations that support

women and girls of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural backgrounds. For

mural information key, enter the Women’s Building or contact them at

http://

http://www.womensbuilding.org/ or (415) 431-1180.