OZU /UNITED STATES /LOS ANGELES /GUIDE
Los Angeles in a day
10 h route5 stopsBest: East to west, following the sun: finish at the beachUpdated July 2026
Distances here aren’t measured in kilometres but in traffic: Santa Monica to Downtown is 25 kilometres that can be twenty-five minutes or an hour and a half depending on the clock. So the day is won or lost on one decision, and it isn’t what to see: it’s in what order. Crossing town twice in a day throws away the morning.
The solution is to draw a line east to west, following the sun: start inland in the morning and finish at the ocean at sunset, never doubling back. And some good news: two of the three best stops on this day are free.
The route, stop by stop
5 STOPS- 01
The Griffith Observatory
Start high and early, and that sets up the rest of the day. Griffith Observatory sits on the flank of Mount Hollywood, opened in 1935, and entry to the building is free: telescopes, astronomy exhibits and a terrace with the whole of Los Angeles spread below, from Downtown to the Pacific.
And it’s the best place to see the Hollywood sign, facing you on the same hillside. Griffith J. Griffith donated it along with the park around it, one of the largest urban parks in North America. If the facade looks familiar it’s because Rebel Without a Cause was shot here, and there’s a bust of James Dean outside.
Go in the morning: the car park fills and by afternoon it’s a queue.
- 02
The Hollywood sign, and the truth
The symbol of the film industry had nothing to do with film. It went up in 1923 and read HOLLYWOODLAND: a billboard, advertising a property development selling hillside plots. It was meant to stand for eighteen months.
It stayed, fell apart, and in 1949 the chamber of commerce removed the last four letters and patched up the rest. What you see today is from 1978: the original letters were so rotten they had to be remade, and donors paid for them letter by letter, Hugh Hefner and Alice Cooper among them.
You can’t reach it, it’s fenced and monitored: so the best view is from the observatory or Lake Hollywood.
- 03
LACMA and Urban Light
At street level, without entering the museum and without paying, is Urban Light: 202 cast-iron street lamps in rows, all salvaged from Los Angeles streets, from different decades and models. Chris Burden assembled them in 2008 and they’ve become the city’s most photographed symbol after the sign.
That it works so well is the joke: it’s a piece made from municipal scrap the city was going to melt down.
Behind it is LACMA, the largest art museum in the western US, and next door the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, in a 2021 Renzo Piano building. If you’re going into one, choose: both don’t fit in this day.
- 04
The Getty Center
The best museum in Los Angeles and admission costs nothing: you pay for parking, and that’s the joke everyone here makes. You arrive at the foot of the hill and ride up on a five-minute automated tram, which is already part of it.
At the top, Richard Meier built a complex of travertine pavilions with stone brought from Italy (look at it closely, there are fossils on the surface) overlooking the whole Los Angeles basin and the sea. Inside is first-rate European painting, Van Gogh and Rembrandt included, but what stays with you is Robert Irwin’s central garden, a work of art in its own right that shifts with the seasons.
In fog you see nothing from up there, so if the day is grey, swap it for an indoor museum.
- 05
Santa Monica and Venice, at sunset
The end of the day and the end of something else: on Santa Monica pier there’s a sign marking the end of Route 66, the road that crossed the country from Chicago. America stops and the Pacific starts, and the sunset from the pier is the one you’ve seen in fifty films.
A step away is Venice, and its story is one of the city’s best: in 1905 a tobacco businessman called Abbot Kinney bought a marsh and dug canals to build a replica of Venice in California, with gondolas and genuine Italian gondoliers shipped over.
Most were filled in during the twenties to make streets, but several remain, and they’re a silent, lovely residential neighbourhood three blocks from the chaos of the boardwalk. Almost nobody looks for them.
Frequently asked
Can you see Los Angeles in a day?
One line of it, yes: Griffith Observatory in the morning, Urban Light and a museum at midday, the Getty in the afternoon and Santa Monica at sunset, always east to west. What doesn’t work is crossing town twice: it’s 25 km from Downtown to the beach and the traffic decides.
Why was the Hollywood sign put up?
It was property advertising: it went up in 1923 reading HOLLYWOODLAND to sell plots in a hillside housing development, and was only meant to last eighteen months. In 1949 the last four letters were removed. What you see today was remade in 1978.
Is the Getty Center free?
Admission is, for everyone. What you pay for is parking, and that’s the standing local joke. An automated five-minute tram takes you up the hill, and Robert Irwin’s garden is as worth it as the paintings.