Vertigo: Hitchcock's San Francisco

Scottie is a former San Francisco police detective who has retired after an accident left him with an extreme fear of heights. Then Gavin Elster, an acquaintance from college, asks him to follow his wife, Madeleine, claiming she has been behaving strangely. Ernie's, a real restaurant at 847 Montgomery Street in Jackson Square, is where Scottie first sees Madeleine. Location shooting began in San Francisco in September 1957, under the working title From Among the Dead. Ernie's closed in 1995.

Gavin and Madeleine's apartment in the film is The Brocklebank, at 1000 Mason Street on Nob Hill. The building still looks essentially the same. It stands across the street from the Fairmont Hotel, where Hitchcock usually stayed when he visited the city and where many of the cast and crew stayed during filming. Shots of the surrounding neighbourhood also catch the James C. Flood Mansion and Grace Cathedral, so a walk around this corner of Nob Hill puts you inside the frame.

Scottie follows Madeleine to the grave of Carlotta Valdes, who died in 1857, at Mission San Francisco de Asís, better known as Mission Dolores. The headstone was a prop built by the studio's props department. It was left behind, then removed because the mission thought it disrespectful to the dead. The screenwriters had little choice: every other cemetery had been evicted from the city limits in 1912. The adobe chapel, completed in 1791, is the oldest intact structure in San Francisco.

Visitor guidance: Mission Dolores is open to visitors; its cemetery, the oldest in San Francisco, is part of the complex.

At the Legion of Honor art museum, Madeleine gazes at the Portrait of Carlotta. A local historian then explains Carlotta's story: she was the mistress of a wealthy married man, bore his child and was cast aside. The portrait was a prop, painted for the film by artist John Ferren, and it was lost after leaving the gallery, though many of the other paintings behind it are still on view. The museum itself stands on the former Golden Gate Cemetery, which closed in 1909.

Visitor guidance: The portrait is gone, but many of the paintings seen behind it in the film are still on view.

Scottie trails Madeleine to Fort Point, and rescues her after she jumps into San Francisco Bay. The film stages it at the old fort beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, which sits directly below the bridge's southern approach, under an arch that supports the roadway. A crew of 200, many of them unemployed miners, spent eight years building the fort. It is now protected as Fort Point National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service.

Visitor guidance: Fort Point National Historic Site is run by the National Park Service, directly under the Golden Gate Bridge.

The next day Madeleine delivers a letter of gratitude to Scottie, and they spend the day together, travelling to Muir Woods and Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, where they embrace. The redwoods billed as Muir Woods are in fact Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The kiss was filmed at Sunset Point Overlook near Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, and the lone tree beside them was a prop brought specially to the location.

Location precision: The kiss was filmed at Sunset Point Overlook near Cypress Point; the pin marks the Cypress Point headland on 17-Mile Drive, not the exact lookout.

Visitor guidance: Cypress Point is one of the scenic attractions along 17-Mile Drive in Pebble Beach.

Madeleine's nightmare leads Scottie to Mission San Juan Bautista, which he identifies as Carlotta's childhood home. She runs up the bell tower; he follows, but his fear of heights halts him on the steps, and he sees her fall. The tower is a trick: a steeple had been demolished after a fire, so Hitchcock added a much larger one using scale models, matte paintings and photography at Paramount. Even the staircase was built in a studio.

Visitor guidance: The mission is a working parish church and has served mass daily since 1797.

After Madeleine's death, Scottie notices a woman who reminds him of her and follows her into her apartment, where she identifies herself as Judy Barton, from Salina, Kansas. The film's Empire Hotel, where Judy lives, is at 940 Sutter Street. Her room was built on a set, but the green neon Hotel Empire sign outside was based on the real hotel's sign. The building was known as Hotel Vertigo from 2009 until it became Hotel Julian in 2024, and its restaurant was renamed Carlotta's.

Visitor guidance: The building at 940 Sutter Street is now Hotel Julian; its restaurant is called Carlotta's, a nod to the film.

Scottie remains obsessed with Madeleine and asks Judy to change her clothes and dye her hair to resemble her. The domed building the two walk past is the Palace of Fine Arts. It was built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, conceived to evoke a decaying ruin of ancient Rome, and by the 1950s the fake ruin was crumbling for real. The camera caught the original: it was demolished in 1964 and rebuilt until 1974 in poured-in-place concrete. The story ends where Madeleine fell: Scottie drives Judy back to the bell tower at San Juan Bautista, and a nun rising from the stairs startles her into a fall.

Visitor guidance: The rotunda stands beside a lagoon in the Marina District.