Espresso bars and bakeries ring this park at the bohemian heart of San Francisco, a tradition more than a century old around you. North Beach was settled by Italian immigrants — fishermen and their families from Genoa, Sicily, and the Italian Riviera — who established a community so coherent that the neighborhood retained its Italian character even as the city changed around it. The bakeries, delis, trattorias, and espresso bars around Washington Square still operate in a tradition that the Italian families established in the 1880s.
The church of Saints Peter and Paul on the north side of the square, completed in 1924, was where Joe DiMaggio had his wedding photos taken — though he could not be married there because he was divorced, so the ceremony was held at a nearby church. The Beat Generation chose North Beach not despite its Italian roots but because of them: the neighborhood already had a tradition of outdoor life, late-night conversation, and intellectual argument conducted over coffee, values the Beats adopted wholesale. The coffeehouses — Vesuvio, Caffe Trieste, Enrico's — were the living rooms where Kerouac, Ginsberg, and their circle held court.
Caffe Trieste, on Vallejo Street, was where Francis Ford Coppola wrote parts of the Godfather screenplay.