Hollywood
The better of Hollywood's two wax museums, this is the place to take selfies with motionless movie stars (Salma Hayek, Tom Hanks and Patrick Swayze), old…
Must-see attractions in Los Angeles
Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden
Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood & Westwood
Located northeast of Royce Quad at the sprawling UCLA campus is this verdant sculpture garden, considered one of the most comprehensive in the country…
Hollywood
You’ll have no trouble recognizing this iconic 1956 tower, one of LA’s great mid-century buildings. Designed by Welton Becket, it resembles a stack of…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
The oldest surviving house in LA was built in 1818 by wealthy ranchero and one-time LA mayor Francisco José Avila. After subsequent lives as a boarding…
Pasadena & the San Gabriel Valley
While in the Huntington Library area, make a quick detour to this transporting brick-and-adobe structure with creaky wooden floors and exposed timbers in…
Santa Monica
Peer under the pier – just below the carousel – for this small aquarium. Kid-friendly touch tanks crawl with critters and crustaceans scooped from local…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
Downtown's '60s-era concert hall was home to the LA Philharmonic (until it moved to the acoustically superior Walt Disney Concert Hall) and frequent venue…
Hollywood
You know the drill: the Guinness is all about the fastest, tallest, biggest, fattest and other superlatives. Frankly it's an underwhelming tourist trap…
Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood & Westwood
The main lure of the Paley Center, located in a crisp white building by Getty Center architect Richard Meier, is its mind-boggling archive of TV and radio…
Long Beach & San Pedro
Ostensibly the main visitor attraction in Point Fermin Park is this restored 1874 lighthouse, which looks like a Victorian home and is one of the oldest…
Hollywood
Hollywood’s first feature-length film, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man, was shot in this building in 1913–14, originally set at the corner of Selma and…
Los Feliz & Griffith Park
What look like Aztec ruins in a picnic-friendly park are actually the abandoned remnants of the city's original zoo. The site opened in 1912 with a modest…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
This beaux-arts creation is Broadway’s biggest entertainment complex, seating close to 2500 people. The theater debuted in 1921 with a vaudeville show and…
Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood & Westwood
The Powell Library offers access to the UCLA Film and TV Archive, the country’s second-largest after the Library of Congress, with more than 350,000…
South Bay Beaches
Watch the earth curve and the sea crash on the Point Vicente bluffs while leaning against the gleaming-white 1926 lighthouse, which was staffed until 1971…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
Featuring two granite polygonal skyscrapers connected by a three-story atrium, this 1983 office complex is the work of renowned Chicago architecture firm…
Southern California Institute of Architecture
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
The surrounding area got a nod of respectability when this institute moved into the former Santa Fe Freight Yard in 2001. It’s a progressive laboratory…
Hollywood
Spanish Colonial meets East Indian at the flamboyant El Capitan movie palace, built for live performances in 1926 and now run by Disney. The first flick…
Mildred E Mathias Botanical Garden
Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood & Westwood
In the southeastern corner of the UCLA campus, the seven-acre Mildred E Mathias Botanical Garden harbors more than 3000 native and exotic plants and…
Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood & Westwood
Just north of Santa Monica Blvd is the rather eclectic O'Neill House, built in 1988. While it doesn’t have a famous architect, its free-form, art nouveau…
Long Beach & San Pedro
Galleries in LA's historic ferry building (on the National Register of Historic Places) tell the story of the city's relationship with the sea and display…
Long Beach & San Pedro
Don’t get overly excited just because the words 'East Village' and 'Arts' happen to appear in the same sentence. Still, this rather small corner of…
Forest Lawn Memorial Park – Glendale
San Fernando Valley
The final home of such Golden Age superstars as Clara Bow, Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart. Alas, many of their graves are in mausoleums and are off…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
Across the LA River is LA’s largest artist colony, housed in a former brewery. Most lofts and studios are generally closed to the public except during the…
Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising is a private college with an international student body. Very much part of the nearby Fashion District's…
Santa Monica
Close by the Original Muscle Beach, the search for the next Bobby Fischer is on at the International Chess Park. There are more than 65 regular-sized…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
A breathtaking loft space owned and operated by the artist himself. Reynolds specializes in mixed-media canvasses and sculpture, and uses anything and…
Pasadena & the San Gabriel Valley
Overlooking the Arroyo Seco from its ridgetop perch is this world-renowned arts campus. Free tours for prospective students are offered during the school…
Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood & Westwood
The Powell Library offers access to the UCLA Film and TV Archive, the country’s second-largest after the Library of Congress, with more than 350,000…
Hollywood
Quite possibly the most novel coffee shop in town, this drive-thru branch of the famous Seattle chain occupies a lovingly restored, art-deco gas station…
Hollywood
Starved for celeb sightings? Don’t fret: at this museum Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry and other red-carpet royalty will stand still – very still – for your…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
South of Old Plaza are a number of historic buildings, including the 1870 home of Pio Pico, California’s last Mexican governor. It was the city’s first…
Tournament House & Wrigley Gardens
Pasadena & the San Gabriel Valley
Chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley spent his winters in the elegant Italian Renaissance–style mansion where the Tournament of Roses Association now…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
Dressed in their traditional charro suits, Mexican mariachi musicians have been descending on Boyle Heights' old-school zócalo (public square) since the…
San Fernando Valley
Perhaps the world's most famous TV house sits on a surprisingly ordinary suburban block in NoHo and looks rather small compared to what you might remember…
Pasadena & the San Gabriel Valley
On the grounds of a palatial beaux-arts mansion that once housed the Finnish consulate, this interesting museum now presents changing exhibits on some…
Long Beach & San Pedro
The beachfront location is breathtaking; permanent collections boast pop art, mid-20th-century furniture and sculpture and some contemporary work; and the…
Downtown Los Angeles & Boyle Heights
The unusual-looking tower is a yagura, a traditional fire-lookout tower typically found in rural Japan. It’s the gateway to this kitschy outdoor mall,…
West Hollywood & Mid-City
Ten slabs of the old Berlin Wall, augmented by well known street artists, are on display on the lawn of a Wilshire high-rise across the street from LACMA…
Los Angeles
The university's art museum presents changing selections from its ever-expanding collection of American landscapes, British portraits, French Barbizon…
