When to Go

Despite its desert climate, most of Los Angeles is protected from extremes of temperature and humidity by the mountain ranges to its north and east. August and September are the hottest months, January and February the coolest and wettest. Offshore breezes keep the beach communities cooler in summer and warmer in winter than those further inland, particularly the San Fernando Valley, which is the hottest area in summer and the coldest in winter. The average LA temperature is around 70°F (21°C), though smog-shrouded summer days can get well over 90°F (32°C), while winter temperatures around 55°F (12°C) are not uncommon.

There really aren't any seasonal restrictions on a visit to LA. If you go in summer, you'll see the beaches at their liveliest, with all the Baywatch types flexing their pecs and displaying their implants. If the thought of wall-to-wall toned bodies makes you a tad uneasy, try spring (April to May) or fall (September to November), when the crowds are smaller and the prices lower.

History

The earliest residents of the Los Angeles area were Gabrieleño and Chumash Indians, who arrived in the desert region between 5000 and 6000 BC. The first European known to have visited the LA basin was Portuguese sailor Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who cruised the coast in 1542, but it wasn't until the late 18th century that the real influx began. In 1769, the Spanish governor of California, Don Gaspar de Portola, and Franciscan father Junipero Serra led an expedition north from San Diego, looking for places to build missions and Christianize California's 'heathen' natives. Eventually, 21 California missions were established along El Camino Real (The King's Highway), two of them in what was to become Greater Los Angeles: the Mission San Gabriel Archangel (1771) and the Mission San Fernando Rey de España (1797).

In 1781, the missionaries chose 44 settlers from San Gabriel to establish a new town on the banks of a stream about 9 miles (15km) southwest of the mission. They named the settlement El Pueblo de Nuestro Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río Porciúncula (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Porciuncula River) after a saint whose feast day had just been celebrated. Los Angeles, as the pueblo became known, developed into a thriving farming community.

Upon Mexican independence in 1821, many of that new nation's citizens looked to California to quench their thirst for private land. By the mid-1830s, the missions had been secularized and a series of governors began doling out hundreds of free land grants, thus giving birth to the rancho system. The prosperous rancheros quickly became California's bigwigs, while immigrants from the United States became the merchant class. By the mid-1830s, there were still only 29 US citizens residing in Los Angeles. Most Easterners hadn't heard about California until 1840, with the publication of Richard Henry Dana's popular Two Years Before the Mast, an account of his experience plying the hide-and-tallow trade. 'In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be,' Dana wrote of Los Angeles, then with a population of just over 1200.

As part of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States paid $15 million for all Mexican territories west of the Rio Grande and north of Arizona's Gila River, including Alta California. Two years later California was admitted as the 31st state of the union. The big push behind this rapidfire recognition was gold; first unearthed near the San Fernando mission in 1842, that find was soon eclipsed by James Marshall's famous 1848 discovery on the American River, which ignited one of the greatest gold rushes in history. The sudden stampede of tens of thousands of argonauts (80,000 in 1849 alone - thus the nickname '49ers) had an undeniable impact on LA as well. Southern California's rancheros were called upon to feed the miners, and they quickly discovered that the new wealth of the mining camps could earn them 10 times the profits they were earning from their cattle.

With statehood, Los Angeles was incorporated (on 4 April 1850) and made the seat of broad Los Angeles County. It was an unruly city of dirt streets and adobe homes, plus many saloons, brothels and gambling houses. By 1854, northern California's gold rush had peaked and the state fell into a depression. As unemployed miners flocked to LA, businesses that had harnessed their futures to miners' fortunes closed their doors. Making matters worse for the rancheros was the land commission sent west by Congress in 1851. Everyone who had received a land grant two decades earlier was now forced to prove its legitimacy with documents and witnesses. By 1857, some 800 cases had been reviewed by tribunal, 500 in favor of the original pre-rancho landowners.

When the first transcontinental railroad, the Central Pacific (later renamed the Southern Pacific), was completed in 1869, San Francisco was California's metropolitan center. Los Angeles' isolation made it unattractive to San Francisco's robber barons, but a spur line finally reached LA in 1876, just in time to service the upstart southern Californian orange-growing industry. The first commercial grove proved so successful that a second crop was established in what is now Orange County. By 1889, more than 13,000 acres (5200 hectares) were planted in citrus.

After a hard-sell boosterism campaign, more Easterners heeded the advice of crusading magazine and newspaper editor Horace Greeley to 'Go West, young man.' LA's population jumped from 2300 in 1860 to more than 100,000 in 1900, despite the fact that there was no natural harbor and the fresh water supply was woefully inadequate. Construction of a harbor at San Pedro, 25 miles (40km) south of city hall, began in 1899; the first wharf opened in 1914, the year the Panama Canal was completed, and - suddenly 8000 miles closer to the Atlantic seaboard - San Pedro became the busiest harbor on the West Coast.

Bringing drinkable water to the growing city required a more complex solution. In 1904, LA's water-bureau superintendent William Mulholland visited the Owens Valley, 230 miles (370km) northeast, and returned with plans to build an aqueduct to carry snowmelt from the mountains to the city. Voters approved the plan, and by November 1913, Owens River water was spilling into the San Fernando Valley at a rate of 26 million gallons (120 million litres) per day. Today, the daily flow has increased to 525 million gallons (2.4 billion litres). The rest of the city's water, as well as Southern California's electricity, comes from dams on the Colorado River, 200 miles (320km) east.

LA's population soared to one million by 1920, two by 1930, which had a lot to do with the discovery of oil. During WWI, the Lockheed brothers and Donald Douglas established aerospace plants in the area, and by WWII the aviation industry employed enough people to lift LA out of the Depression. A real estate boom, capitalizing on the influx of aviation employees, brought capital to the region as well as new suburbs south of Los Angeles. And then there was the movies.

Ever since the studios first landed in Los Angeles, the city has raced to live up to the hype created by 'the industry.' That image helped lure two new breeds of immigrant: the eccentric artisan and the fashionable hedonist, drawn by the broad sandy beaches and the temptation of living the Hollywood lifestyle.

Despite the economic upswing, trouble was brewing. For decades policy-makers had turned a blind eye to ethnic friction, including the 'zoot-suit riots' in 1943. By the mid-60s, South Central LA had reached the boiling point. The bubble burst in August 1965, with one of the nation's worst-ever race riots. The primarily black district of Watts exploded during six days of burning and looting. South Central saw subsequent riots in 1979 and 1992; the latter, a direct result of the notorious Rodney King beatings, cost 51 lives and $1 billion in property damage, much of it directed at Korean shopkeepers.

In contrast, a ray of hope came with the city's unified response to a recent spate of natural disasters. Though a surprising number of earthquakes, wildfires, floods and mud slides have plagued LA in the last decade, they've brought out the best in Angelenos.

Downtown Los Angeles

Just as you'd imagine, LA's downtown area is framed by freeways rather than any particular geographic boundary. The Hollywood Fwy lies to the north, the Harbor Fwy to the west, the Santa Monica Fwy to the south and a bird's nest of other freeways intertwine beyond the Los Angeles River to the east. In the thick of all this concrete and congestion, however, intrepid urbanites will find a number of pockets worth exploring.

Extending eight blocks east to west, the city's Civic Center is America's largest complex of government buildings after Washington, DC. It contains the most important of LA's city, county, state and federal office buildings, including the US Federal Courthouse, where the infamous OJ Simpson murder trial took place in 1995, and the 1928 City Hall, which served as the Daily Planet building in Superman and the police station in Dragnet. North across Temple St from City Hall is the excellent LA Children's Museum.

A few blocks east of the Civic Center, El Pueblo de Los Angeles is a 44 acre (18ha) state historic park commemorating the site where the city was founded in 1781 and preserving many of its earliest buildings. Its central attraction for most visitors is Olvera Street, a narrow, block-long passageway that was restored as an open-air Mexican marketplace in 1930. In addition to its restaurants, Olvera St teems with the shops and stalls of vendors selling all manner of Mexican crafts, from leather belts and bags to handmade candles and colorful piñatas.

Directly across from El Pueblo is Union Station, one of LA's oft-overlooked architectural treasures. Built in 1939 in Spanish Mission style with Moorish and Moderne details, it's worth a stop even if you aren't hopping a train. A few blocks north of the station, the 16 square blocks of Chinatown comprise the social and cultural nucleus of LA's 200,000 Chinese residents. Here, the businesses of traditional acupuncturists and herbalists mingle with scores of restaurants and shops whose inventories vary from cheap kitsch to exquisite silk clothing, inlaid furniture, antique porcelain and intricate religious art.

Immediately southeast of the Civic Center is Little Tokyo. First settled by early Japanese immigrants in the 1880s and thriving by the 1920s, the neighborhood was effectively decimated by the anti-Japanese hysteria of the WWII years. Thanks in part to an injection of investment from the 'old country,' Little Tokyo is again the locus for LA's Japanese population of nearly a quarter million. Among its streets and outdoor shopping centers, you'll find sushi bars, bento houses and traditional Japanese gardens. Housed in a historic Buddhist temple, the Japanese American National Museum, exhibits objects and art that relate the history of Japanese emigration to, and life in, the USA.

Just southwest of the Civic Center is the Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. It houses what is considered one of the world's most important collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs from the 1940s to the present. Just west of MOCA is The Westin Bonaventure hotel, a quintet of cylindrical glass towers that are instantly recognizable to any regular moviegoer.

South of the Civic Center, LA's Hispanic shopping district is a deliciously cluttery mix of cheap restaurants, frilly wedding dress shops and blaring Latin pop. For a shocking contrast to the bustling street scene, step inside the 1893 Bradbury Building, where a skylit, five-story atrium is surrounded by Belgian marble, Mexican tiles, ornate French wrought-iron railings, glazed brick walls, oak paneling and a pair of open-cage elevators. You've seen it in detail if you've seen the movies Blade Runner or Wolf. Across the street from the Bradbury, between Broadway and Hill St, Grand Central Market is LA's oldest (1917) and largest open-air food market.

Hollywood

Los Angeles has built its reputation on the glamour of the movies, and most visitors want at least a little of its glitz to rub off on them. Hollywood itself (in northwestern LA) is no longer the movie mecca it once was, but it certainly holds plenty of historic interest. Take a walk down Hollywood Blvd and you'll pass by famous sights such as Mann's (née Grauman's) Chinese Theatre, where more than 150 of the glitterati have left their prints on the sidewalk out the front. Head east along the Boulevard, stepping on those famous bronze stars, and you'll find yourself at the Roosevelt Hotel. Soak up a bit of 1930s ambiance: this is where the first Academy Awards were held in 1928 and where Errol Flynn, Salvador Dali and F Scott Fitzgerald often propped up the bar.

The corner of Hollywood and Vine was once the heart of off-screen action for the Industry, but you wouldn't know it now. If you want a memento of those golden days, the Collectors Book Store on the corner is a treasure trove of memorabilia. If you don't manage to spot a real star while you're in Hollywood, drop by the Hollywood Wax Museum or (for real stars' knickers) Frederick's of Hollywood Lingerie Museum.

Disneyland

Does anyone go to Los Angeles and not visit Disneyland? Apparently the happiest place on earth (though the hordes of screaming children and parents at their wits' end may make you doubt it), Disneyland is a masterpiece of picture-perfect choreography - even the litter bins are themed. The park is divided into four different lands: Adventureland has a jungle theme and features Indiana Jones and the Forbidden Eye; Frontierland celebrates the myth of the Wild West; Fantasyland devotes itself to Disney's favorite characters; and Tomorrowland is (you guessed it) all about the future. In summer, you'll spend the better part of your visit to Disneyland queuing - one of the best ways to avoid this is to come in the evening when the kiddies are in bed. Uncle Walt's wonderland is in Anaheim, half an hour's drive south of downtown LA; you can get there by bus, hotel shuttle or by car on I-5.

Universal City

To lift your chances of running into a living, working actor, visit Universal City, home of the very-much functional Universal Studios and one of LA's biggest theme parks. The studios were built in 1915, and public tours have been running since 1964. Catch a tram on the Backlot Tour to see the locations of several famous movies and TV shows, or spend your bucks on one of the many movie-related rides. Universal also features special effects displays, musical-comedy revues and an animal actors stage. The studio's eight restaurants are prime star-spotting territory. Universal is in the San Fernando Valley, north of the city.

Beverly Hills

No star-studded tour would be complete without a visit to Beverly Hills, home to the rich and famous. Just west of Hollywood, this city-within-a-city flaunts its wealth with opulent manors on manicured grounds and shopping streets overflowing with designer labels. The Hills' Golden Triangle is bisected by that locus of conspicuous consumption, Rodeo Drive, where retailers such as Tiffany, Armani and Vuitton flog their wares.

North Beverly Hills is the epicenter of luxury living, home to the likes of Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Harrison Ford. For all the latest on who lives where, pick up a 'Star Home Map' from a street-corner vendor. If your desire to look over strangers' fences isn't sated by Beverly Hills, extend your trip to that other famous neighborhood, Bel Air, in western LA, or the slightly less lively (but nonetheless star-studded) Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, final resting place of Rudolph Valentino, Jayne Mansfield and Cecil B De Mille.

Malibu

Los Angeles' beaches have a lot of hype to live up to, and in most cases they don't quite make it. Immortalized by the Beach Boys, Beach Blanket Bingo and Baywatch as miles of golden sand awash with babes of both sexes, in reality the city's beaches are often polluted and sparsely populated. Nonetheless, some of them are definitely worth a look. Malibu is the archetypal Southern California babe beach and your best bet for sunning and swimming. West of the city, Malibu's beaches are backed by the rugged mountains of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It can be quite difficult to find a stretch of sand, as much of the shoreline is privately owned, but there are some very pleasant state beaches.

Santa Monica

Just north of the airport, Santa Monica is one of the city's most appealing neighborhoods. Although the beach only comes to life on the hottest summer days, the surrounding area is a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon. The heart of Santa Monica is the 3rd St Promenade, a lively pedestrian mall packed with buskers, movie theaters, bars and cafes. The Santa Monica pier, built between 1908 and 1921, is the oldest pleasure pier on the West Coast. It has plenty of old-world carnival attractions, including a 1920s carousel, and seafood restaurants. The neighborhood is also home to some excellent museums of modern art.

Venice Beach

Venice Beach pretty much sums up the LA lifestyle. The beach's Ocean Front Walk is a human circus of jugglers and acrobats, tarot readers, jug-band musicians, pick-up basketballers, oiled-up fitness freaks and petition circulators. A hundred years ago, this place was just swampland, until an enterprising cigarette tycoon turned it into a network of gondola-poled canals and dubbed it the 'Playland of the Pacific.' Most of the canals have now been paved over, but the playland atmosphere is hanging in there. It's a great place to shop and an even better place to down a freshly-squeezed juice while the human tide washes over you.

Getty Center

Contrary to popular belief, LA does have an intellectual, refined side. When you're shopped, glitzed, tanned and rollercoastered out, head for some of the best museums in the USA. Top of the list has to be the John Paul Getty collection of museums. The original Getty gallery, in a replica of an AD 79 Pompeiian villa on the Pacific Coast Hwy just west of Santa Monica, is undergoing extensive remodeling and will reopen as the Getty Villa in 2002. The Villa will house the Greek and Roman sculpture collections, which comprise only a fraction of one of the world's most valuable art collections (around US$3 billion worth). The museum's European and photography and numerous other collections are now on display at the stunning new 110-acre Getty Center in the Santa Monica mountains. Admission is free, making this one of the best bargains in town.

Other museums worth a look include downtown's Museum of Contemporary Art, which houses one of the world's best collections of modern art. The Museum of Tolerance, just south of Beverly Hills, presents a gut-wrenching look at some of the more appalling examples of human behavior. Its interactive, high-tech exhibits focus on the oppression of blacks in America and the Jewish Holocaust. At the other end of the spectrum, the Max Factor Beauty Museum in Hollywood lauds the cosmetics industry's role in creating many an LA beauty.

Knott's Berry Farm

If lining up to have your photo taken with an acned teen in a mouse suit isn't your idea of fun, you might prefer Knott's Berry Farm, a more bucolic theme park 4 miles (6km) northwest of Disneyland. Originally a fried chicken dinner and berry eatery, the Knotts set up a little Old West display to keep the diners entertained. The place has grown a bit since then, but gunfightin' and gold pannin' are still all the rage. There's also a Mexican-themed Fiesta Village, Camp Snoopy for the littlies and plenty of chicken-regurgitating rides. You can get here by bus, hotel shuttle or by car on I-5 and Hwy 91.

Rollercoaster purists will bypass both Disneyland and Knott's for the greater glories of Six Flags Magic Mountain. Magic Mountain has more rides than Greyhound, with all the joys of spiral hairpin drops, boomerang turns, zero-gravity spins and waterfall plummets. Magic Mountain's 100 rides are in Valencia, an hour's drive northwest of downtown off of I-5.

Pasadena

Never mind that the neighboring foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains often sit shrouded in a mantle of smog; once you get over your wheezing, there are few areas of Los Angeles more redolent of LA's 'golden years' than Pasadena. Its oak-lined avenues wind past superbly maintained turn of the century homes, from Mission-style stucco squats to column-clad mansions of every persuasion - even 'stately Wayne Manor' from the original Batman TV series. Among the treasures is local architects Charles and Henry Greene's sprawling Gamble House, considered the consummate Craftsman bungalow, and even the persnickety genius of Frank Lloyd Wright has been locally preserved in the Millard House, La Miniatura.

The heart of the city, known as Old Town Pasadena, centers on Colorado Blvd at Fair Oaks Ave. This 14-block historic district underwent a major facelift around 1990, ushering in a bustling renaissance of upscale boutiques, restaurants, coffeehouses and the odd antique and rare-book dealer. On the south side of the district, the Moorish/Spanish Colonial Hotel Green rises up like an elaborate Errol Flynn movie set, while at the western end of Colorado, the Norton Simon Museum houses its a different brand of eye candy: one of the finest collections of classical art in the country. Look for Rodin's The Thinker out front.

A few miles east of Old Town, opulent San Marino is home to the Huntington Library, Museum & Botanical Gardens. Once the estate of railroad tycoon Henry E Huntington, it's now a cultural center, research institution and a damn fine place to spend a lazy afternoon. The library's collection of rare books includes a Gutenberg bible, a Chaucer manuscript and Benjamin Franklin's handwritten autobiography. The art gallery has a world-class collection of 18th century British and French paintings and two centuries' worth of American art. The botanical gardens are made up of 15 theme areas: the most popular are the Desert, Japanese and Shakespearean Gardens.

La Brea Tar Pits

The La Brea Tar Pits, just outside the downtown area, is one of the world's most important paleontological sites. These bubbling pits have trapped thousands of plants and animals over the last 40,000 years, and fossils of all sorts of prehistoric beasts are still being uncovered. You can see excavations in action at an observation pit, and the George C Page Museum displays many of the fossils pulled from the pits, including saber-tooth cats and an enormous dire wolf.

Santa Catalina Island

Discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542, Santa Catalina is one of the largest of the Channel Islands, a chain of semi-submerged mountains between Santa Barbara and San Diego. Most of the island has been privately owned since 1811, when the Native American population was shipped off to the mainland. Tourists have been sailing in since the 1930s, but the privately owned areas remained largely untouched until 1975, when they were bought out by the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy. The island is now preserved against development, and its unique ecosystem, with 400 endemic and indigenous plants, 100 species of birds and numerous animals (including wild American bison), is protected by law.

Avalon is the only town on Santa Catalina. It's dominated by the white Spanish-Moderne Casino, built by chewing-gum heir William Wrigley Jr in 1929, when he owned the island. The casino is no longer open for gambling, but it does have a grand ballroom (Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller both played here), a huge theater, the Catalina Island Museum and an art gallery. Other highlights of the town include the Chimes Tower, which is covered in inlaid tiles; the old Wrigley Mansion, now a hotel; and the Wrigley Memorial & Botanic Gardens.

Most visitors to Santa Catalina come for the fantastic watersports, including diving, snorkeling, sea kayaking, ocean rafting and sailing. There's also some great hiking, horseback riding and bicycling trails. Catalina has plenty of hotels and resorts, as well as four campgrounds, but most are fairly expensive. You can get to Catalina on one of the regular cruises from Long Beach, San Pedro, Redondo Beach or Newport Beach, or you can take a (very pricey) helicopter from Queen Mary Seaport.

San Gorgonio Wilderness

High in the San Bernardino National Forest, south of the popular outdoors destination of Big Bear, San Gorgonio is 90 sq miles (150 sq km) of trees, lakes and barren slopes. The area takes in Mt San Bernardino and San Gorgonio Peak, both over 10,000ft (3000m) high, and a multitude of hiking and equestrian trails. At low elevations, the area is especially arid and full of rattlesnakes; at higher elevations, oak and manzanita are joined by cedar, fir and pine trees. Black bears, coyote, deer and squirrel are common, and even bald eagles fly frequently over the area's campgrounds. Jenks Lake, between Mt San Bernardino and San Gorgonio Peak, is a scenic spot for picnicking and easy hiking.

There are several campgrounds in the wilderness, with minimal facilities and sites for tents and RVs. For those not so keen on roughing it, there are also cabins with sports facilities. San Gorgonio is about 90 minutes' drive from LA. If you don't have wheels, buses run as far as nearby Big Bear, but you'll probably need to organize a ride along Hwy 38 to San Gorgonio.

Palm Springs

Once famous as a winter retreat for Hollywood stars and increasingly as a well-scrubbed retirement home for the moderately wealthy, Palm Springs is the original desert resort city in the Coachella Valley east of LA. To put things in perspective, the valley has about 250,000 people, 10,000 swimming pools, 85 golf courses and more plastic surgeons per head than anywhere else in the US. There's a growing gay scene in Palm Springs, and college kids in the thousands flock here for a riotous spring break, but even so, there's not much to do in town except lounge around the pool or play golf.

The real interest is in visiting the nearby canyons, mountains and desert. Highlights include hiking trails in the Andreas, Murray, Palm and Tahquitz canyons, which are shaded by fan palms and surrounded by towering cliffs, and taking the aerial tramway which climbs 6000ft (1800m) from the desert floor up into the San Jacinto mountains. There are a number of museums in town, including the informative Palm Springs Desert Museum, the Living Desert outdoor museum and botanical garden and the Museum of the Heart, which explains heart attacks while giving you the chance to step inside a giant aorta.

Palm Springs is a two hour drive east of LA and is accessible by Greyhound or train.

Santa Barbara

Sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains, Santa Barbara is often called the California Riviera because of its affluent population, outstanding Mediterranean architecture and gorgeous seaside location. Highlights include the delightful Spanish-Moorish revival style Santa Barbara County Courthouse, the stately Mission Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The city boasts half a dozen decent beaches, the oldest continuously operating wharf on the west coast (once owned by James Cagney), botanical gardens, zoological gardens and arguably one of the most pleasant downtown areas in Southern California. Rising abruptly and majestically to the north, the Santa Ynez foothills offer great camping and hiking opportunities.

Santa Barbara is just over an hour's drive along the coast north of Los Angeles and is accessible by Greyhound or train.