Cinema finally got a museum to match its home town when the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened on Wilshire Boulevard in September 2021. Operated by the organisation behind the Oscars, it is the largest institution in the United States devoted to the art, craft and history of moviemaking, drawing on a collection numbering in the tens of millions of objects, from props and costumes to posters, scripts and equipment. The building itself is part of the attraction. Architect Renzo Piano joined.....

Few place names signal wealth as immediately as Beverly Hills, the small city ringed by Los Angeles that built its identity on Hollywood money and luxury retail. The land was home to the Tongva people, who called the spring-fed site the gathering of the waters, and it later became a Mexican rancho and then lima-bean fields before a syndicate drilling for oil struck water instead and laid out a town. Beverly Hills was incorporated in 1914, two years after the Beverly Hills Hotel opened and began .....

A revered institution of the West Coast jazz scene, Catalina Jazz Club, often known as Catalina Bar and Grill, has been presenting world-class jazz in Hollywood for more than four decades. Founded by Catalina and Bob Popescu in 1986, the club has hosted a who's who of jazz greats over the years and has become one of the most respected rooms of its kind in the United States, a place where legends and rising stars alike take the stage. The venue operates in the supper-club tradition, combining an.....

A hallowed institution of American stand-up, The Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood is one of the most famous comedy clubs in the world. Founded in 1972 in a building that once housed the legendary Ciro's nightclub, the club became the crucible of modern stand-up comedy, a place where countless legendary careers were forged and where the raw, boundary-pushing style of contemporary comedy took shape over the following decades. The venue is spread across multiple rooms, each with .....

Built as a permanent home for the Academy Awards, the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard has hosted the Oscars almost every year since it opened in 2001, making it one of the most televised auditoriums on earth. Designed by David Rockwell at a cost of around 94 million dollars, it seats about 3,400 across four tiers and sits at the heart of the Ovation Hollywood retail and entertainment complex, next door to the historic TCL Chinese Theatre. It opened under a different name. For its first dec.....

The neon crown above Wilshire Boulevard has been glowing since 1936. The El Rey Theatre at 5515 Wilshire, in the heart of the Miracle Mile's preserved Art Deco district, was designed by Clifford A. Balch - architect of more than twenty Southern California picture houses - as a single-screen neighbourhood cinema, its Zigzag Moderne facade, terrazzo forecourt and blazing vertical sign making it one of the finest surviving examples of the style in the city. It ran movies for nearly fifty years, th.....

Set on Hollywood Boulevard within the Ovation Hollywood complex, this Hard Rock Cafe puts the music-themed chain in the middle of one of the world's most famous entertainment strips, beside the TCL Chinese Theatre and the Dolby Theatre that hosts the Academy Awards. The location ties the brand's rock-and-roll identity to the surrounding glamour of the film industry and the Walk of Fame underfoot. The Hard Rock concept dates to a London diner opened in 1971 by two homesick Americans, which grew .....

Synonymous the world over with the film industry, Hollywood Boulevard runs east to west through the heart of Hollywood, its central stretch lined with the brass-and-terrazzo stars of the Walk of Fame. More than 2,700 of those stars honour actors, musicians, directors and others, set into the pavement in a tradition begun in 1960, and the sidewalk itself has become one of the most-walked tourist attractions in Los Angeles. The boulevard's landmarks cluster along a few famous blocks. The TCL Chin.....

In the middle of Los Angeles, on the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard known as the Miracle Mile, bubbles one of the world's richest fossil sites: the La Brea Tar Pits, where natural asphalt has seeped to the surface for tens of thousands of years. The sticky pools, set in the green expanse of Hancock Park, have trapped and preserved Ice Age animals in extraordinary numbers, making this a working palaeontological dig in the heart of a modern city. The science here is remarkable. Over millennia, cru.....

On Hollywood Boulevard beside the historic Chinese Theatre, Madame Tussauds Hollywood is a wax museum stocked with lifelike figures of film stars, musicians, athletes and other celebrities, posed for visitors to walk among and photograph. Opened in 2009, it brings the long-running waxworks brand to the centre of the movie capital, leaning naturally into themes of cinema and stardom. The franchise traces its roots to the eighteenth-century French wax modeller Marie Tussaud, who learned her craft.....