An immersive projection mapping light show in the heart of San Francisco
LISTEN TO SHOW AUDIO HERE
LISTEN TO SHOW AUDIO HERE
CITY HALL WINTER LIGHTS
CITY HALL WINTER LIGHTS
This holiday season, San Francisco City Hall will come to life as a luminous storybook.
Through a customized projection light show, City Hall Winter Lights activates the historic façades of City Hall—one of SanFrancisco’s most recognizable civic landmarks—and frames it as a shared canvas for holiday imagination and community spirit.
Free and open to all, the experience invites families, neighbors, and visitors to see City Hall in a new light.
dates and times
The show will begin December 6th and run through December from 5:30 PM to 12:00 AM. The show will run every half hour (Duration: Approximately 10 minutes).
The show offers residents and visitors a moment of light, color, and reflection as they pass through Civic Center during the holiday season and adds to the impressive renaissance of activity and engagement across the City.
THE SHOW
The experience is a 10-minute original animation with sound. The show and score, which were created for the installation, are organized into six segments, each drawing from a different facet of San Francisco’s identity—its architecture, culture, creativity, and global outlook.
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The show opens by wrapping City Hall in the original architectural drawings of Arthur Brown Jr., the building’s designer. What begins as a quiet tribute to the building’s origins gradually unfolds into a tableau of holiday decorations that fill the façade with warmth and color. The transition is meant to acknowledge City Hall’s long civic history while also welcoming the holidays in a modern way
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In the second segment, City Hall is visually situated within the larger urban story of San Francisco. The building takes its place in the heart of the city amid bridges, hills, fog, cable cars, and the city’s shifting skyline. City Hall stands not as a monument apart, but as an integral element in the daily movements and rhythms of the city around it.
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The third segment pays homage to the essential role music plays both across San Francisco and particularly within its Civic Center institutions.
Here, City Hall transforms into an orchestra of bells, keyboards, and strings, with a nod to the city’s official instrument—the accordion. The animation invites viewers to see the building not as stone and dome alone, but as part of a wider cultural ecosystem that includes the symphony, opera, and countless forms of musical expression, so much a part of our city.
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In a lighthearted salute to one of San Francisco’s most cherished holiday traditions, the fourth scene turns City Hall into a Nutcracker toy factory. Figures, gears, and machines playfully animate the façade in a nod to the innovation and creation so much a part of San Francisco. A nutcracker ventures beyond the factory to join a ballerina in dance, honoring the Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet, first staged in San Francisco in 1944.
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The fifth segment offers a quiet moment of reflection. City Hall appears as an ice palace, cold and crystalline, before gradually softening into warm tones as candlelight fills the structure. This transformation is meant as an honor to the everyday light, resilience, and warmth of residents across the city.
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The show concludes by recognizing San Francisco’s longstanding role as an international gateway and a welcoming host to cultures from around the world. A simple wish for peace is projected across the building in the languages of the 73 international consulates that call San Francisco home. This closing moment is a reminder that in a diverse city, shared wishes can still carry collective meaning.
Immersive sound
From 5:30 PM–12:00AM each evening, experience the show with a synchronized musical soundtrack streamed directly to your mobile device.
From 5:30PM - 9:00PM each evening there will be amplified sound.
PLEASE NOTE: There will be no amplified sound on Thursday Decemebr 17th 5:30-6:30PM, December 24th, and December 25th. Please use your smartphone to access sound at the link below during those times.
The Location
Visit San Francisco City Hall to see the magic come to life! Both the Polk Street and Van Ness Avenue sides of the building will be illuminated. For optimal viewing of the show, visit Civic Center Plaza between Polk Street and and Larkin Street.