The arts are a traveller's window into the heart of San Francisco

San Francisco has always had an acute sense of the frontier, and this can be said for its arts scene as well as for its gung-ho economy.

As a gold rush town, it was unusually cosmopolitan. In the mid-1800s, it hosted up to 37 foreign consuls, with newspapers and theatre productions in at least five languages. By the time Mark Twain turned up in the 1860s, the city was a blur of bohemian activity, with strip after strip of saloons, boarding houses, dance halls, brothels and theatres.

During the next century, this bohemia fell victim to industry and the power of the American puritans. It is no coincidence that its architecture is so frothily Victorian. But its role as an artistic frontier somehow survived and 'heading west' has brought out the best in many writers since - from Jack London and Jack Kerouac to Isabel Allende and Amy Tan.

For anyone wanting to get a real sense of the place - after the trips to Alcatraz and a few laps of the bridge - there is scarcely a better angle from which to view it.

Once the counter-cultural hub of the Beat scene - the radical 1950s art movement of jazz, booze and 'free thoughts' - North Beach rubs shoulders with Chinatown and is defined by its homey European cafes, jazz dens and gelato stands. The Beat Museum, which opened in September, is a great place to start, especially on a Saturday morning when it holds its walking tours.

Converted rather haphazardly from a travelling exhibition, the museum needs a little spit and polish, but you will be pushed to find better memorabilia. Keep an eye out for the Beat pad mock-up, the annotated works of Howl by Alan Ginsburg and the screening of avant-garde films from the era.