OZU /UNITED STATES /LOS ANGELES /GUIDE
The museums of Los Angeles
8 h route5 stopsBest: The Getty on a clear day. The Broad, booking the mirror roomUpdated July 2026
Enormous fortunes settled here, spent decades buying art, and then gave it all to the public. That’s why the city of film and freeways turns out to be one of the best in the world for looking at it. Nothing contradicts your idea of Los Angeles more.
And the practical consequence is odd: the city’s two best museums, the Getty and The Broad, have free general admission. Not a free evening a month, not a discount: you don’t pay. In the city where everything costs and you need a car, the art is the free part.
The route, stop by stop
5 STOPS- 01
The Getty Center
J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world and left his fortune to an art trust with one condition that explains everything: admission had to be free forever. It is. You only pay for parking.
Richard Meier took fourteen years to build it on a hilltop, with 1.2 million pieces of travertine from a quarry near Tivoli, cut by a technique that leaves the stone rough: get close and you’ll see fossilised leaves and fish in the walls. Inside: Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Turner, illuminated manuscripts and photography. Outside: Robert Irwin’s central garden, which he described as a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art.
In fog you can’t see the city from up there, so check the sky before you go.
- 02
The Broad
Free general admission and one of the best contemporary art collections in the world: Basquiat, Koons, Warhol, Kruger, Sherman. The Diller Scofidio + Renfro building runs on an idea they call “the veil and the vault”: the porous facade is the veil filtering the light, and the collection store is the vault, visible from inside. Yes, you can see the storage: it’s part of the visit.
The catch: Yayoi Kusama’s infinity mirror rooms aren’t covered by general admission and must be booked separately, in advance, and they go fast. If that’s why you came, check the website before turning up.
And opposite is Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, which you can walk around and enter the lobby of for free.
- 03
LACMA and Urban Light
The museum is paid, but two of its best works are outside and cost nothing. Urban Light is 202 cast-iron street lamps rescued from Los Angeles streets, different models from different decades, lined up by Chris Burden in 2008. They come on at dusk.
And behind it is Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass: a 340-tonne boulder suspended over a trench you walk through, with the rock above your head.
Bringing it from a quarry 100 km away took eleven nights of transport at walking pace, the rock crossing whole neighbourhoods in the small hours with people coming out to watch it pass. The journey was half the work.
- 04
The Getty Villa
The most eccentric and most wonderful thing in Los Angeles: Getty wanted a museum for his Greek and Roman antiquities and, instead of a building, had an entire Roman villa rebuilt. Specifically the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, buried by Vesuvius and known only from partial excavation, so parts of it are archaeological conjecture turned into architecture.
The result is a colonnaded courtyard, a long pool, bronzes and gardens of Roman plants, the same species, looking out over the Pacific. It’s absurd and it works.
Entry is free but you book a time slot in advance. If you go, combine it with the Malibu coast, which is right there.
- 05
The Watts Towers
The best art story in Los Angeles and it’s far from everything, in a neighbourhood nobody visits. Simon Rodia was an Italian immigrant labourer and, between 1921 and 1954, he built in his back yard a set of towers up to 30 metres high, steel coated in mortar and decorated with whatever he found: broken tile, shells, soda bottles, pottery.
He did it alone, with no scaffolding, no drawings, no help and no tools beyond his trade’s. He worked for 33 years. When he finished he gave the property to a neighbour and left the city, never to return.
In 1959 the city tried to demolish them as unsafe and ran a load test: the crane pulling on them broke before the towers did. They’re still there.
Frequently asked
Which museums are free in Los Angeles?
The Getty Center and the Getty Villa are free for everyone (you only pay for parking, and the Villa needs a timed booking) and The Broad has free general admission. At LACMA, Urban Light and Levitated Mass are outdoors and free.
Do you need to book for The Broad?
General admission is free, but Yayoi Kusama’s infinity mirror rooms are separate, booked in advance and they sell out fast. If that’s why you’re going, check the website before turning up.
What are the Watts Towers?
A set of towers up to 30 metres high that Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant labourer, built alone in his back yard between 1921 and 1954, with no drawings or scaffolding, decorated with broken tile, shells and bottles. When the city tried to demolish them, the crane broke before the towers did.