Ten Landmarks. One Unforgettable Walk.
Gaslamp Arch to Seaport Village — two hours through the most storied mile of America’s Finest City.
Where the tour begins
Gaslamp Quarter Arch
The great illuminated arch over Fifth Avenue marks the gateway to 16 blocks of Victorian San Diego — once the ‘Stingaree,’ the roughest red-light district on the West Coast, now the city’s most celebrated night-out. Our tour starts right here, at 222 Fifth Ave, under the blue umbrella.
Explore this stop →The city’s oldest home
Davis-Horton House
A saltbox house shipped around Cape Horn in 1850 — pre-cut in Maine and assembled here — is the oldest surviving structure in downtown San Diego. William Heath Davis dreamed of building ‘New Town’ around it; the city ignored him for two decades.
Explore this stop →A 1924 movie palace reborn
Balboa Theatre
Opened in 1924 with a tile dome that still crowns the Gaslamp skyline, the Balboa was San Diego’s Spanish-Renaissance movie palace — complete with indoor waterfalls flanking the stage that still run today.
Explore this stop →A Victorian with a past
Yuma Building
Built in 1888, the Yuma Building is one of the Gaslamp’s finest Victorians — and one of its most notorious addresses. When the city finally raided the Stingaree district in 1912, the Yuma was among the first doors they knocked on.
Explore this stop →The president’s palace
US Grant Hotel
Ulysses S. Grant Jr. built this Beaux-Arts palace in 1910 to honor his father — 437 rooms of marble and chandeliers that instantly became San Diego’s living room. Fourteen U.S. presidents have stayed under its roof.
Explore this stop →Beaux-Arts showpiece
Spreckels Theatre
Sugar magnate John D. Spreckels opened this jewel-box theater in 1912, timed to the Panama-California Exposition, and declared it the first modern commercial playhouse west of the Mississippi.
Explore this stop →The world’s oldest active ship
Star of India
Launched in 1863 on the Isle of Man, the Star of India is the world’s oldest active sailing ship — an iron-hulled survivor of mutiny, cyclone, and twenty-one circumnavigations hauling immigrants to New Zealand.
Explore this stop →A city at sea
USS Midway
The longest-serving American aircraft carrier of the 20th century — 47 years from WWII’s end to Desert Storm — now rests on the Embarcadero as one of the most-visited naval museums on Earth.
Explore this stop →A floating collection
The Maritime Museum
Not one museum but a fleet: steam ferries, submarines (Soviet and American), a replica Spanish galleon, and the Star of India — one of the world’s great collections of historic vessels, all afloat on the bay.
Explore this stop →Where the tour ends
Seaport Village
Fourteen waterfront acres of shops, buskers, and bay views where our downtown tour ends — with the Coronado Bridge arcing across the water and the carousel spinning since 1895.
Explore this stop →Walk All Ten — Pay What You Wish
English daily at 10 AM, Español 10:30 AM. Pay what you wish at the end.