Where was Vertigo filmed?

Hitchcock's dizzying study of obsession remains one of cinema's great love letters to San Francisco, and that is precisely its set-jetting appeal. The film drinks in the city's light, its hills and its bay until the geography itself feels like part of the spell, drawing fans who want to stand where its haunted images were made.

Those images come from real places. Fort Point, the brick fortification tucked directly beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, is where the woman he is following plunges into the bay and is pulled out again. An hour or so to the south, Mission San Juan Bautista staged the vertiginous bell-tower finale; the tower was a film effect, but the Spanish mission and its plaza are genuine and still standing. Both belong to the San Francisco area of the United States.

Fans can pair a bayside visit to Fort Point, with the bridge soaring overhead, with a day trip south to the mission for a quieter, more historic counterpoint. Together they trace the film's pull from the heart of the city out into old Spanish California, an easy and rewarding set-jetting loop by car.