With so many neighbors and so little privacy, it’s not the kind of place you’d expect to find a celebrity. But back when Cage bought it in 1989, he was just a hirsute 25-year-old somewhat-known actor with a made-up last name.

The three-story, five-bedroom white Victorian house was likely one of the first properties Cage ever purchased. It was like a starter home for him — and a goal realized.

His uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, had also owned a grand Victorian in San Francisco. Growing up, Cage had visited it often and fell in love with its old design. He once told biographers, “I vowed then that I would go to Los Angeles, learn to act, and then one day buy my own Victorian mansion in San Francisco.”

Cage owned the Victorian for 16 years — until 2005 — occupying it during what was arguably the most climactic time of his career, winning his first and only Academy Award and starring in some of his most famous and beloved films: Face/Off, The Rock, Leaving Las Vegas, Con Air, Gone in 60 Seconds, Snake Eyes, 8 mm, Adaptation, and even bad ones like National Treasure. He also got married twice, went through two divorces, and entered fatherhood.

Throughout the years, Nicolas Cage snatched up more residences — a mid-century modern house in the Hollywood Hills; a mansion in Las Vegas big enough to have “staff quarters;” English and German castles; a manor and 26-acre estate in Rhode Island; and an island in the Bahamas.

In the mid-aughts, he owned as many as 15 properties. Cage was on a multi-year shopping spree around that time, purchasing everything from a Gulfstream jet, Rolls Royces, dinosaur bones, shrunken pygmy heads, and a 9-foot pyramid-shaped tomb.

That phase ended in 2009 when the I.R.S. fined him for owing more than $6.3 million in property and back taxes. He ended up having to sell or foreclose on a lot of what he owned, including the Bahamian island, the French quarter townhome, and his 1940s Bel Air mansion.

Perhaps if he hadn’t been in financial straits, Cage would have held onto those homes longer, just like he did with the San Francisco house. Or maybe that was just a special singular exception.

On a Sunday afternoon in November, I visited the 121-year-old home — which is being sold by Coldwell Banker Global Luxury, listed by Joel Goodrich, and, on the weekend of my visit, shown by realtor Christopher J. Meza. Since the actor sold the property in 2005, the house had passed through two owners. Unfortunately, Meza didn’t know if any of them had been Cage fans prior to buying it.

Thanks to the many curious neighbors that have visited the open-houses, Meza has managed to glean more nuggets of insight into Cage’s connection to the abode. One woman who saw him said she remembered being surprised by how much he was balding. Another local who toured the house recalled how Cage “was frequently greeted by eager fans” outside his front door.

A tenant of the apartment next door told me that he moved in four years after Cage left — and thus never saw the actor — but that he remembered the person who bought it next very well.

“That guy was living here for a while and I saw him all the time driving a fancy, old car,” he told me. “He had, like, a long mane of hair and only wore black leather trench coats all the time. So when I found out it was Nic Cage’s old place, I was like, ‘Oh, this all makes sense now.’ “It kind of fits that he lived there, especially with the gargoyles.”

Yes, there are gargoyles in front of Nicolas Cage’s old house, as well as two stone lions flanking the front door that may or may not have been there when he owned it. But the gargoyles definitely were.