Visit top … There is a picnic area to eat, so we recommend bringing sealed food and beverages if you want to save a few bucks. is a new arrival, featuring the cast from the movies and music hand-picked by director James Gunn.There are things in every city that locals avoid like the plague, but visitors can’t afford to pass up.The Hollywood Walk of Fame is in that vein, commending actors, musicians, directors, musical and theatrical groups and even 16 fictional characters with stars in the pavement.A little less than half of all the stars are dedicated to someone in the film industry.In case you didn’t know, the stars are made of brass and terrazzo and in spring 2019 there were more than 2,600.
The great egalitarian force that brings the public together is the Los Angeles Public Library, an eight-story building full of books, periodicals, audiovisual materials, computer access and more.
Today, it’s a happening, walkable neighborhood filled with trendy watering holes and art galleries (what else? Try another? If you're a film buff, vintage Hollywood is a must-see. Follow our guide of where to go and what to see in this City of Angels.Disneyland isn’t technically LA—it’s in Anaheim—but lots of visitors to the area make the hour jaunt out to The Happiest Place on Earth. Of all the many enduring landmarks in Los Angeles, this three-domed Art Deco monument holds a certain mystique.The Griffith Observatory is posted on the south face of Mount Hollywood, the highest peak in the park, and the sight of the city rippling in the sun or twinkling at night from Observatory’s terraces are the stuff of dreams.We can’t begin to list the movies and TV shows that have made the most of this location, but James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause(1955) is the one that put the observatory’s in the world’s gaze.The 25-metre, copper clad central dome houses the Samuel Oschin Planetarium, which screens Centered in the Universe, a hi-res trip through time, via discoveries by Ptolemy and Galileo, and space, through the Milky Way, and landing back on the Griffith Observatory’s front lawn.You can also peer through telescopes and explore more than 60 space-oriented exhibits.The largest art museum in the western United States, and one of the largest museums of any description in the country, LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile is in a mishmash of seven buildings on a 20-acre site.The collections are mind-bendingly vast, covering all ends of the earth and from the ancient times to the present.For the smallest summary there are inventories of Greek, Roman And Etruscan art, American and Latin American art, modern and contemporary art, Islamic art, Asian art, decorative arts, photography and film as well as eye-catching permanent art installations.If all this leaves you overwhelmed there are some works that you can’t leave without seeing, like Diego Rivera’s Portrait of Frida Kahlo (1939), Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio by David Hockney (1980), Titian’s Portrait of Jacopo (1532), The Swineherd by Paul Gauguin (1888) and Chris Burden Urban Light installation at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance.As of 2019 there were plans to give the campus a bit more uniformity with a massive building designed by Peter Zumthor, with an opening date slated for 2024.An eccentric neighbourhood and seaside resort, the world-famous Venice is Los Angeles at its most cosmopolitan and independent.Although gentrification has crept in, the 2.5-mile Venice Beach Boardwalk is still prowled by outlandish characters, and teems with tattoo parlours, cannabis shops, international cuisine, countless street vendors and a big cast of street performers.The skate plaza and Venice Muscle Beach are two world-famous signatures, as is the snaking Strand trail on the cusp of the massive sandy beach with its constant stream of cyclists and skaters.Seek out the historic arcaded buildings, harking back to the original development at the start of the 20th century when the tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney created his own version of Italy’s Venice.The boardwalk is the second most-visited place in Southern California, but will never feel oppressive thanks to the wide-open expanse of sandy beach and the grassy foreshore tufted with palms.Before the Getty Center there was the Getty Villa, commissioned by J. Paul Getty in the 1970s after the previous gallery on his property in Pacific Palisades ran out of space.The Getty Villa is down the hill on the same land, looking out onto the Pacific.The building, completed in 1974, is a reproduction of a lavish 1st-century CE Roman villa: The Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum to be precise.Reopened in 2006 after a long-term renovation, the Getty Villa holds the Getty Museum’s collections for Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities, spanning 6,000 years up to 400 CE.The exhibition picks from a gigantic reserve of 44,000 pieces and over the last couple of years has been rearranged in a loose chronological order.The must-sees are plentiful, and among them are the “The Beauty of Palmyra” funerary relief (190-210 CE), Statue of a Victorious Youth (300-100 BC), the Caeretan Hydria (525 BC) and the ensemble of frescoes from the Villa Numerius Popidius Florus at Boscoreale (1-79 CE).In October 2012 the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which took part in 25 NASA missions from 1992 to 2011, rolled through the Los Angeles streets from LAX to the California Science Center.At the time of writing in 2019 the shuttle was still in a temporary pavilion, and the exhibition, available with a Special Exhibit or IMAX Theater pass, shows off this staggering piece of hardware, along with some of its fittings like the Space Potty, galley, tyres from its final mission and the SPACEHAB Logistics Module, a kind of workshop for astronauts.Though undoubtedly impressive, Endeavour is just one exhibit at a museum brimming with interactivity, relating ecosystems, world-changing inventions, air and space, how our organs and cells work and showing off a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird outside.There’s always a choice of well-curated special exhibitions and of course the IMAX Theater, seven storeys high.As opposed to the action-packed Universal Studio Tour, a visit to Warner Bros. close by in Burbank is less about razzle-dazzle and more about the craft of making films and TV shows.The standard tour lasts between two and three hours and packs in a visit to the Sound stage where the Big Bang Theory is shot, as well as the Archive and Prop House, bursting with props and costume from countless movies including the Harry Potter series and the DC Universe.The Backlot has jungle, Midwest town, New York and Western sets that will ring a bell straight away, while the Picture Car Vault holds a fleet of cars from Warner Bros. productions, counting several Batmobiles.A newer attraction is Stage 48: Script to Screen, a self-guided walk through an interactive sound stage, ushering you through the production process and displaying the set from Central Perk in Friends.Over tens of thousands of years until Los Angeles was developed, animals would be trapped and preserved in the tar at what is now Hancock Park by LACMA.Heavy oil from the Salt Lake Oil Field would seep to the surface, becoming viscous natural tar as its lighter fractions evaporated.The tar would be covered with a layer of water or dead leaves, waiting to lure unsuspecting mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, bison, horses and dire wolves and preserve them intact.The pits have yielded some 400 animals and are an ongoing excavation site (there’s a viewing area at Pit 91).
The great egalitarian force that brings the public together is the Los Angeles Public Library, an eight-story building full of books, periodicals, audiovisual materials, computer access and more.
Today, it’s a happening, walkable neighborhood filled with trendy watering holes and art galleries (what else? Try another? If you're a film buff, vintage Hollywood is a must-see. Follow our guide of where to go and what to see in this City of Angels.Disneyland isn’t technically LA—it’s in Anaheim—but lots of visitors to the area make the hour jaunt out to The Happiest Place on Earth. Of all the many enduring landmarks in Los Angeles, this three-domed Art Deco monument holds a certain mystique.The Griffith Observatory is posted on the south face of Mount Hollywood, the highest peak in the park, and the sight of the city rippling in the sun or twinkling at night from Observatory’s terraces are the stuff of dreams.We can’t begin to list the movies and TV shows that have made the most of this location, but James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause(1955) is the one that put the observatory’s in the world’s gaze.The 25-metre, copper clad central dome houses the Samuel Oschin Planetarium, which screens Centered in the Universe, a hi-res trip through time, via discoveries by Ptolemy and Galileo, and space, through the Milky Way, and landing back on the Griffith Observatory’s front lawn.You can also peer through telescopes and explore more than 60 space-oriented exhibits.The largest art museum in the western United States, and one of the largest museums of any description in the country, LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile is in a mishmash of seven buildings on a 20-acre site.The collections are mind-bendingly vast, covering all ends of the earth and from the ancient times to the present.For the smallest summary there are inventories of Greek, Roman And Etruscan art, American and Latin American art, modern and contemporary art, Islamic art, Asian art, decorative arts, photography and film as well as eye-catching permanent art installations.If all this leaves you overwhelmed there are some works that you can’t leave without seeing, like Diego Rivera’s Portrait of Frida Kahlo (1939), Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio by David Hockney (1980), Titian’s Portrait of Jacopo (1532), The Swineherd by Paul Gauguin (1888) and Chris Burden Urban Light installation at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance.As of 2019 there were plans to give the campus a bit more uniformity with a massive building designed by Peter Zumthor, with an opening date slated for 2024.An eccentric neighbourhood and seaside resort, the world-famous Venice is Los Angeles at its most cosmopolitan and independent.Although gentrification has crept in, the 2.5-mile Venice Beach Boardwalk is still prowled by outlandish characters, and teems with tattoo parlours, cannabis shops, international cuisine, countless street vendors and a big cast of street performers.The skate plaza and Venice Muscle Beach are two world-famous signatures, as is the snaking Strand trail on the cusp of the massive sandy beach with its constant stream of cyclists and skaters.Seek out the historic arcaded buildings, harking back to the original development at the start of the 20th century when the tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney created his own version of Italy’s Venice.The boardwalk is the second most-visited place in Southern California, but will never feel oppressive thanks to the wide-open expanse of sandy beach and the grassy foreshore tufted with palms.Before the Getty Center there was the Getty Villa, commissioned by J. Paul Getty in the 1970s after the previous gallery on his property in Pacific Palisades ran out of space.The Getty Villa is down the hill on the same land, looking out onto the Pacific.The building, completed in 1974, is a reproduction of a lavish 1st-century CE Roman villa: The Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum to be precise.Reopened in 2006 after a long-term renovation, the Getty Villa holds the Getty Museum’s collections for Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities, spanning 6,000 years up to 400 CE.The exhibition picks from a gigantic reserve of 44,000 pieces and over the last couple of years has been rearranged in a loose chronological order.The must-sees are plentiful, and among them are the “The Beauty of Palmyra” funerary relief (190-210 CE), Statue of a Victorious Youth (300-100 BC), the Caeretan Hydria (525 BC) and the ensemble of frescoes from the Villa Numerius Popidius Florus at Boscoreale (1-79 CE).In October 2012 the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which took part in 25 NASA missions from 1992 to 2011, rolled through the Los Angeles streets from LAX to the California Science Center.At the time of writing in 2019 the shuttle was still in a temporary pavilion, and the exhibition, available with a Special Exhibit or IMAX Theater pass, shows off this staggering piece of hardware, along with some of its fittings like the Space Potty, galley, tyres from its final mission and the SPACEHAB Logistics Module, a kind of workshop for astronauts.Though undoubtedly impressive, Endeavour is just one exhibit at a museum brimming with interactivity, relating ecosystems, world-changing inventions, air and space, how our organs and cells work and showing off a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird outside.There’s always a choice of well-curated special exhibitions and of course the IMAX Theater, seven storeys high.As opposed to the action-packed Universal Studio Tour, a visit to Warner Bros. close by in Burbank is less about razzle-dazzle and more about the craft of making films and TV shows.The standard tour lasts between two and three hours and packs in a visit to the Sound stage where the Big Bang Theory is shot, as well as the Archive and Prop House, bursting with props and costume from countless movies including the Harry Potter series and the DC Universe.The Backlot has jungle, Midwest town, New York and Western sets that will ring a bell straight away, while the Picture Car Vault holds a fleet of cars from Warner Bros. productions, counting several Batmobiles.A newer attraction is Stage 48: Script to Screen, a self-guided walk through an interactive sound stage, ushering you through the production process and displaying the set from Central Perk in Friends.Over tens of thousands of years until Los Angeles was developed, animals would be trapped and preserved in the tar at what is now Hancock Park by LACMA.Heavy oil from the Salt Lake Oil Field would seep to the surface, becoming viscous natural tar as its lighter fractions evaporated.The tar would be covered with a layer of water or dead leaves, waiting to lure unsuspecting mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, bison, horses and dire wolves and preserve them intact.The pits have yielded some 400 animals and are an ongoing excavation site (there’s a viewing area at Pit 91).