Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Guía del visitante y qué hacer cerca

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, often shortened to YBCA, is a contemporary arts centre at 701 Mission Street in the SoMa district of San Francisco. It brings together gallery exhibitions, live performance and film in the middle of Yerba Buena Gardens, and it is one of the anchors of the neighbourhood's cultural quarter.

The story behind it

The name goes back to the earliest days of the city. Yerba Buena, Spanish for good herb, was what the small settlement on this shore was called before it became San Francisco in 1847. When the area south of Market Street was redeveloped in the late twentieth century, the old name was given to the new gardens and cultural buildings, and the arts centre opened in 1993 as part of that plan.

The complex is built around the idea that art should sit alongside everyday city life, with gardens, galleries and a theatre sharing the same blocks. Architect Fumihiko Maki designed the galleries and forum building. Across the street is Moscone Center, the convention complex named for Mayor George Moscone, so the area carries a layer of San Francisco's political history as well as its arts story.

What to look for

• The clean, modern lines of the galleries and forum building, where glass, concrete and angled surfaces contrast with the older brick buildings around SoMa.
• The posters and signage announcing the current exhibition or performance, since the programme changes often and leans toward contemporary and community-rooted work.
• The green space of Yerba Buena Gardens next door, which sits above the convention halls and gives a calm pocket in a busy downtown district.
• The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in the gardens, a waterfall you can walk behind, with quotations set in glass panels.

Tips for your visit

• Allow about 30 minutes to see the outside and the gardens, or one to two hours if you go into an exhibition or catch a show.
• Check current opening hours and what is on before you go, as galleries and performances follow their own schedule.
• Pair it with nearby sights: SFMOMA, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Metreon are all within a short walk.
• Late morning or afternoon is pleasant for the gardens, when office workers and visitors fill the lawns.

See it on a quest

The quest Murder Mystery: Death in the Shadows in SoMa, San Francisco takes you through this part of the city on foot, and the arts centre is one of the places on the way. The app tells you about each place as you reach it, and you solve a puzzle on the spot using what is in front of you, which makes you look much harder at the streets than a normal stroll would. It is a paid quest, and one ticket covers the whole group.