Legion Of Honor: My Favorite SF Site

The Legion of Honor

One of the most unexpected and yet most mesmerizing places I was blessed to visit while in San Francisco was not in the heart of the tourist area at all.  Instead, it was a short and scenic drive to the top of a hill in Parkland with some of the best and most breathtaking views of the city imaginable.

I had seen a post encouraging visitors to come and see The Legion Of Honor and since there was a cache located there with a decent number of fave points, we added it to our agenda. It turned out to be the best decision of my entire trip!



view from the lawn

 I know that I originally went to claim the geocache, but the cache turned out not to be the main event for this outing. In fact, even there were no cache here, I would still encourage every person to take the time to visit this intriguingly serene monument which is surrounded by coastal pines and magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean!



He said he was a thing of beauty, a work of art,
and should be photographed.
 I actually admired his faith in himself, and so I
took his picture like he wanted.

I'm not really sure what it is that I was expecting, but it certainly was not the emotional and spiritually moving experienced that was given to me! This was a completely different side of the city that would have been a crime to miss.

Though the name might suggest you are about to see a museum dedicated to military history, that could not be further from the truth. What you are really about to see is a collection of 4,000 years of ancient and European art in an exquisite Beaux-Arts building in an unforgettable setting overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Prepare to be blown away by the atmosphere before you even enter the building!

Though the museum was built to house a variety of masterpieces, there is no denying that it is, in and of itself, its own masterpiece.

We were first greeted with Rodin's world famous statue, "The Thinker", which is really enjoyable to see in real life after years of seeing it in books and photos.


 I won't drone on and on about all of the engaging art you will see here, but I cannot help but mention one or two of the things that touched me the deepest.

The first was a painting that arrested my attention immediately upon seeing it was "Young Boy Singing" which I had mistakenly thought was a young girl reading a letter by candlelight. Either way, I found the use of light and darkness delightful and came back several times to look at it.

Sleeping Venus

Another favorite of mine was Sleeping Venus





Thalia, Muse of Comedy

This was the one that captured the attention of my friend Deena the most - Thalia, Muse of Comedy- and I agree with her.  The look on the heroine's face is so full of mischief, as if she holds a secret that the rest of us would love to know and she will not easily share!

But I fell head over heels in love when I saw one painting and truly believe I could have stood there and gazed at it for hours on end and still found it enthralling, and that one was Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Lady with a Unicorn".  There is no photo that can do this painting justice and no words I can share that could express how it moved me to look into her eyes.

To say that I was enraptured and bewitched by this portrait would be an understatement.  So I will merely share the photos with you and hope that they move you to want to see her in all her glory for yourself.

Of course, it would not be me if I did not include a little history and trivia for you, so here it is...

Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn (ca. 1505–1506) features an unidentified blond-haired sitter and epitomizes the beauty of Raphael’s female portraits during his Florentine period.

It was first attributed to Perugino and was attributed to Raphael only when the painting was restored in between 1934-1936. It is only the time that the unicorn was revealed because the heavy painting was removed. The unicorn symbolizes purity in the medieval romance in place of Catherine’s wheel.

Interestingly, upon x-ray, it was revealed that under the unicorn was originally painted a dog.

I recommend you to look this painting up on Google and learn all that you can about it...I could go on for pages about how interesting its history is, but I won't do so now for the sake of brevity.

I will close with this thought...If this had been the only place that I had time to visit on my trip, I would have gone home happy and content that I had seen the best the city had to offer. Yes, I enjoyed it THAT MUCH!

But of course, it was not the only place! And I still have much more to write about soon ;)