[2025 San Francisco Attraction] Travel Guide for Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption (Updated Jun)

#bucketlistreboot Titled “The Drunkenness of Noah,” this fresco is the introductory panel of Michelangelo’s masterpiece he painstakingly painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It depicts Noah naked and asleep after drinking too much wine, while his sons mock him for his indulgence. The scene is recreated at a true-to-life scale to the original, printed on fabric that’s been draped on panels arranged throughout a large multi-purpose room inside the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption on Gough Street. But instead of 68 feet in the air, the panels are displayed just 10 feet from the ground, giving a much more detailed view of the artwork.

#bucketlistreboot Titled “The Drunkenness of Noah,” this fresco is the introductory panel of Michelangelo’s masterpiece he painstakingly painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It depicts Noah naked and asleep after drinking too much wine, while his sons mock him for his indulgence. The scene is recreated at a true-to-life scale to the original, printed on fabric that’s been draped on panels arranged throughout a large multi-purpose room inside the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption on Gough Street. But instead of 68 feet in the air, the panels are displayed just 10 feet from the ground, giving a much more detailed view of the artwork.

#bucketlistreboot The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, also known locally as Saint Mary's Cathedral, is the principal church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco in San Francisco, California. It is the mother church of the Catholic faithful in the California counties of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo and is the metropolitan cathedral for the Ecclesiastical province of San Francisco. The 1971 cathedral was designed by local architects John Michael Lee, Paul A. Ryan and Angus McSweeney,[3] collaborating with internationally known architects Pier Luigi Nervi and Pietro Belluschi, then the Dean of the School of Architecture at MIT. Precast concrete work, which is the entire top portion of the building, was constructed by Terracon and the DiRegolo Family of Hayward, CA.

San Francisco Architecture Walk 🚶‍♀️ "St. Mary's Church," located on the outskirts of downtown San Francisco, features a strangely shaped exterior with a hat-shaped roof on top of a rectangular volume. Designed by Italians Pietro Bellusci and Pier Luigi Nervi, the distinctive exterior with a streamlined tower rising from a square volume is modern yet heavy, reminiscent of Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Cathedral Association architecture. The interior space is even more dynamic than the exterior. The design flows from the HP shell structure roof to the lower columns, beautifully integrating design and structure. It also contrasts with the surrounding square planar volumes. Upon investigation, I found out that the architect, Pier Luigi Nervi, is also known as a structural engineer and was a major influence on Kenzo Tange. He argues that architectural design of such shell structures requires not only engineering but also intuition and artistic elements, and somehow, when you see this building, you feel like you can understand it. The columns that connect to the floor in an undulating manner also seem to grow from the ground, creating a very dynamic design. Looking up at the soaring HP shell structure ceiling, fantastic light pours into the gaps from the cross-shaped skylights. A cross is embedded in the dynamic ceiling, which is integrated into the design, and this is also reminiscent of Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Cathedral and Tadao Ando's Church of Light. Looking at the church from all angles and directions for about an hour, you can feel the mathematical beauty of this architecture, which is different from geometric architecture that is based on horizontal and vertical lines. It seems to be the original form that architecture aimed for, where design and structure, or engineering and art, are fused together. After all, beautiful architecture appeals to the five senses.