Best Things to Do in Los Angeles

The list runs east to west across the basin, from Downtown to the sea, roughly the order you'd meet things crossing the city. We'd build a first visit around it, with a note on what to skip.

1. Union Station and Olvera Street. The 1939 station's waiting room is one of the finest public interiors in the city. Across the road, Olvera Street marks where the city began.
2. Downtown's cultural core. Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, its steel curves best seen from the rooftop garden, and The Broad across the street, a contemporary art museum with free timed tickets.
3. Grand Central Market. Food stalls under one roof since 1917. Cross the street to ride Angels Flight, a tiny funicular, and look inside the Bradbury Building's iron-and-glass atrium.
4. Koreatown at night. Barbecue, karaoke and late bars.
5. Griffith Observatory. A 1935 Art Deco observatory on the hillside above Los Feliz, with free exhibits, telescopes on clear nights and the best view of the Hollywood sign and the whole basin. Go for sunset. Our Hollywood guide explains how to get up.
6. A studio tour. The Warner Bros. tour in Burbank shows working sound stages and backlots. Universal Studios is a theme park with a studio tour inside it.
7. LACMA and the Academy Museum. On Wilshire's museum row: LACMA's "Urban Light" lamp posts, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and the La Brea Tar Pits, where Ice Age fossils still come out of the asphalt. The new D Line stops nearby.
8. A hike. Runyon Canyon is busy and close; the trails around Griffith Park and in the Santa Monica Mountains are quieter.
9. The Getty Center. Richard Meier's travertine hilltop museum above Brentwood, reached by a tram, with European paintings, gardens and views to the ocean. Entry is free with a timed reservation; parking is not.
10. The Getty Villa. A copy of a Roman country house in Pacific Palisades, filled with Greek and Roman antiquities. It reopened in 2025 after the Palisades fire and needs its own free timed ticket.
11. Santa Monica and Venice. The pier, the beach path and the Venice Boardwalk, covered in our Santa Monica and Venice guide.

What we'd skip: the Hollywood Walk of Fame as a destination in itself, and bus tours of celebrity homes. You'll see the stars on the way to the Chinese Theatre, and the homes are mostly hedges.