Los Angeles

Take Manhattan, add a splash of Mexico City, a dash of Tokyo and Canton, shake and pour. Your drink: Downtown LA. Rapidly evolving, this is the city's most intriguing patch, a place where cutting-edge architecture and world-class modern-art museums contrast sharply against blaring mariachi tunes, Chinese grocers and abject poverty. It's here that you'll find LA's oldest buildings, its most glorious movie palaces and many of its hottest restaurants, bars, galleries and boutiques, hidden away in basements, on rooftops and inside revamped warehouses. Welcome to the other LA.

Strap on those Rollerblades, hop on a pastel-pink beach cruiser or simply slip into your trunks or bikini and shake what yo’ mama gave you. Captured in countless movies and music videos, Venice's ocean-front walk is where SoCal's crazier side lets it all hang out. It's like one long, skunk-scented runway of eccentricity, flanked by soaring palms, tattoo parlors and street art and packed with new-age bohemians, hippie tribal drummers, street artists, bulging Schwarzenegger wannabes, inked skaters and proud, loud freaks warranting a cameo in that screenplay you're writing.

A cultural citadel in the sky, the Getty Center delivers highs both literal and metaphorical. Firstly there's that soul-lifting panorama, which takes in hillside mansions, the Pacific Ocean and the unapologetic sprawl of the LA basin. Designed by Richard Meier, the billion-dollar museum showcases centuries of glorious creativity, from medieval triptychs to starry Van Gogh skies. Then there are the showstopping gardens, punctuated with blazing flowers, world-famous sculptures and trickling water. Best of all, it's completely free (except for parking – this is still LA, you know).

Let's not mince words: LACMA is an obligatory stop for culture vultures. The largest art museum in the western US, its 100,000-plus works stretch back to antiquity. You'll find one of the world's finest collections of Islamic art, works by heavyweights such as Cezanne, Rivera, Hockney and Ruscha, as well as LA sculptor Chris Burden's crowd-stopping installation Urban Light. And it doesn't stop there, with buzz-worthy touring exhibits, film screenings, readings and Friday-night jazz gigs. Check the website before heading in: much of LACMA is slated to close for renovations.

Welcome to Hollywood, baby. Maker and breaker of countless dreams, this is the heartland of LA lore and legend. You'll find some of the city's most fabled sights on its eponymous boulevard, including the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the gloriously kitsch Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where showbiz hands, shoes and messages lie frozen in the pavement. Despite the tourist hordes and gimmicks, the ghosts of Hollywood's golden age live on, in the mid-century makeup rooms of the Hollywood Museum and the vintage booths of time-warped Musso & Frank Grill.

Mediator between LA and the heavens above, Griffith Observatory delivers stargazing of a different kind. Here, the universe is king, pondered through historic telescopes, high-tech shows, engaging exhibitions and elegant murals. It was in its spectacular planetarium that James Dean was reminded of humankind's relative insignificance in Rebel Without a Cause, one of a galaxy of films showcasing the building's handsome form and sweeping views, which take in LA's skyscrapers and mansions, endless avenues, rugged hills and that most legendary of real-estate relics, the Hollywood sign.

With more than 250 miles of Pacific coastline, Southern California has an overwhelming number of beaches to choose from. Few, however, offer the buzz, pop-culture references and diversions of Santa Monica, an easy metro ride from Downtown LA. Sure you can learn to surf, but you can also ride a solar-powered Ferris wheel on a Hollywood-famous pier; work up a sweat running, cycling or playing volleyball in the home of the original Muscle Beach; or just simply dip your toes in the ocean and catch another heart-melting SoCal sunset.

That both the words Broad and buzz begin with the letter 'B' is no coincidence. In just a few short years, Downtown's Broad has put culture vultures in a spin. The museum's collection of modern and contemporary art is one of the world's finest, packed with pop-art paintings, video art, installations and sculpture from big guns such as Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg, Haring, Kruger and Japanese it-kid Takashi Murakami. Then there's the building itself: designed by the team behind Manhattan's High Line, it's a jaw-dropping, lattice-work behemoth that looks plonked straight out of the 22nd century.

LA's answer to Sydney's Opera House and London's Royal Albert Hall, the Walt Disney Concert Hall demands its own standing ovation. Straight out of the mind of Pritzker Prize–winning architect Frank Gehry, its undulating steel forms evoke the movement of music itself. It's an art form treated reverently inside, where meticulous design equates to pure acoustics worthy of a conductor's tears. While you can explore Gehry's architectural wonder on a guided tour, go one better and book an evening in the company of its prodigious resident, the LA Philharmonic.

LA is the world's movie-making capital, and snooping around its famous studios is one of the city's most idiosyncratic experiences. Top billing goes to Warner Bros, home to the biggest set-construction project in studio history, as well as a booty of Batmobiles. Filmmaking and theme-park thrills join forces at Universal Studios, while Hollywood itself is home to Paramount Pictures, America's second-oldest studio and the very site on which classics such Breakfast at Tiffany's, Grease and TV series Happy Days were shot. Are you ready for your close up?

Calling the Huntington Library a 'library' feels a bit like calling the Taj Mahal a 'house'. More than simply a Pasadena drawcard, the complex is one of the most precious treasures in the entire city, home to celebrated European and American artworks and a string of exquisite, themed gardens that pay tribute to various corners of the world. Then, of course, there's the library itself, where the hefty collection includes extraordinary rare works, from a manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic Canterbury Tales to books by globe-trotting mavericks Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.

Slip on your activewear and baseball cap and join the buff and their canine companions on a hike through Runyon Canyon. Sitting at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, its one-loop track is the city's favorite spot to jog, power walk or simply stroll while chatting contracts, plots or last night's date. Then again, you could just get lost in those commanding city views, or wonder which famous face is hiding behind those oversized D&G shades. Best of all, it's less than a one-mile walk from Hollywood/Highland station on the Metro Red Line, making it an easy urban escape.

You'll be hurled back to prehistoric LA at the La Brea Tar Pits, bubbling up from deep beneath Wilshire Blvd. The only active, urban ice-age excavation site in the world, it was here that thousands of creatures perished between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, unwittingly mired in the pits and forced to meet their maker. Fossils from the pits are showcased at the on-site museum, offering insight into the myriad of quirky creatures that once roamed the LA Basin, from the Columbian mammoth to the Harlan's ground sloth.