Los Angeles, United States: Self-Guided Walking Tour
Things to Do in Los Angeles: What to See from Hollywood to Downtown
Looking for things to do in Los Angeles? The city brings together film history, major museums, remarkable architecture, science, religion, and the stories of its different communities. From the Hollywood Sign and the Walk of Fame to the maritime heritage of San Pedro and the experimental architecture of Richard Neutra, Los Angeles rewards anyone willing to explore beyond its most familiar images.
Neywo offers a free audio guide for Los Angeles with 382 narrated places, available in 11 languages.
What to See in Los Angeles
Fort MacArthur
In San Pedro, Fort MacArthur recalls Los Angeles’s military history. The former United States Army base has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986. Although most of the original installation is no longer a military base, a smaller section remains in use by the United States Air Force as an administrative and housing annex for Los Angeles Air Force Base.
The site is interesting for the contrast between its former role as a large military installation and its more limited military presence today.
Los Angeles Maritime Museum
The Los Angeles Maritime Museum explores the maritime history of San Pedro and the Port of Los Angeles. It occupies a former municipal ferry terminal built in 1941, on the main channel at Sixth Street and Harbor Boulevard.
The ferry service continued until 1963, when the Vincent Thomas Bridge brought it to an end. The former terminal was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996, while the non-profit museum itself opened in 1980.
Neutra VDL Studio and Residences
The Neutra VDL Studio and Residences was the Los Angeles home and studio of architect Richard Neutra. The original house was built in 1932, while the building seen today is the 1964 reconstruction known as VDL II, designed by Richard Neutra with his son, Dion Neutra.
More than a residence, it was an experimental research house and working studio. Its design offers a close look at the Modern Movement and modern Californian architecture.
Hollywood Sign
Above Beachwood Canyon, the Hollywood Sign stands on Mount Lee as one of Los Angeles’s most recognizable landmarks. It began in 1923 as a temporary real-estate advertisement reading HOLLYWOODLAND. In 1949, the final four letters were removed, leaving the name known around the world today.
The current sign dates from a complete replacement in 1978. Its steel letters are about forty-five feet tall and rest on concrete footings. The sign is owned by the City of Los Angeles, while the Hollywood Sign Trust helps protect and maintain it.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA, covers art from ancient times to the present. Located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile area, it is the largest art museum in the western United States, with more than 150,000 works in its collection.
LACMA was founded in 1961 after separating from the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. The museum moved to its Wilshire Boulevard complex in 1965, and its program now includes exhibitions, film series, and concerts.
Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall
The Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall is a major event complex made up of an auditorium and an adjacent exhibition hall. Its importance to Los Angeles has been formally recognized: the site became Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument number 139 in 1975.
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum is divided between two campuses, the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. At the Getty Center in Brentwood, on a cliff overlooking the Sepulveda Pass, the collections include European paintings from before the twentieth century, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, decorative arts, and photographs from the history of photography.
The museum connects art from the ancient world to the modern era with a setting that overlooks the city.
Los Angeles Fire Department Museum and Memorial
Housed in Old Engine Company No. 27, also known as Fire Station No. 27, this museum traces the history and work of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Its collection includes historic fire engines and firefighting equipment, including apparatus dating from the 1880s.
The building was designated a Los Angeles Cultural-Heritage Monument in 1976 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Outside, the Fallen Firefighters Memorial commemorates firefighters who died in the line of duty. A wall lists their names, alongside five life-size statues.
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
The TCL Chinese Theatre, still widely known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, is one of Hollywood’s best-known movie palaces. Its forecourt preserves a personal record of film history in concrete blocks marked with the signatures, handprints, and footprints of movie personalities from the 1920s to the present.
Built in an Exotic Revival style, the theatre opened on May 18, 1927, with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings. It has hosted major premieres, private events, and three Academy Awards ceremonies, and its name has changed over time.
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame turns the pavements of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street into a public tribute to entertainment. Its terrazzo-and-brass stars honor actors, filmmakers, musicians, inventors, businesspeople, and fictional characters.
The idea was conceived in 1953, the first stars were unveiled in 1958, and the first permanent stars were installed in 1960. Today, the Walk of Fame extends across fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street, with more than 2,700 stars.
La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in the middle of Los Angeles. Natural asphalt—also called bitumen, pitch, or brea—has seeped from the ground for tens of thousands of years, trapping animals and preserving their bones in a fossil deposit from the late Pleistocene.
The George C. Page Museum studies the tar pits and displays specimens recovered from them. Together, the museum and the pits reveal evidence of ancient animal life preserved within the modern city.
Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory combines astronomy with some of the city’s broadest views. Set on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park, it overlooks the Los Angeles Basin, Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the Pacific Ocean. The Hollywood Sign is also visible from here at close range.
The observatory opened in 1935 and reopened after renovation in 2006. Its displays focus on astronomy and science, and its 12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope has been used by more than nine million people since the observatory opened.
Angelus Temple
Angelus Temple is a historic church in Echo Park and an important Pentecostal site. Founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1923, it is considered the first megachurch in the United States.
Dolby Theatre
On Hollywood Boulevard, the Dolby Theatre is a major live-performance venue within the Ovation Hollywood entertainment complex. The theatre opened in 2001 and has hosted the annual Academy Awards ceremony since 2002.
It was originally called the Kodak Theatre and took its current name in 2012. Alongside the Oscars, the auditorium hosts concerts, theatrical performances, and special events.
Bradbury Building
The Bradbury Building is one of Downtown Los Angeles’s most distinctive architectural landmarks. Built in 1893, it rises five stories around a skylit atrium crossed by walkways, staircases, and elevators.
Its ornate ironwork is the defining feature of the interior. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a National Historic Landmark, and is the city’s oldest landmarked building. Its atrium has also appeared in films, television productions, music videos, and works of fiction, including the 1982 film Blade Runner.
Explore Los Angeles with a Self-Guided Audio Tour
A Los Angeles self-guided walking tour lets you explore the city without joining a group or following a fixed schedule. Neywo’s tours include:
- 7 walking tours, from 1.86 to 3.14 km and from 55 to 116 minutes, with between 5 and 12 narrated stops.
- 1 bus route, 11.7 km and 50 minutes, with 12 narrated stops.
- 1 bike route, 3.9 km and 20 minutes, with 8 narrated stops.
The walks cover Hollywood Boulevard, Museum Row, Bunker Hill, the city’s historic center, Exposition Park and USC, Heritage Square and Mount Washington, and Westwood Village. The bus route connects Downtown towers with Museum Row, while the bike route crosses Downtown Los Angeles from the cathedral area to the Historic Core.
Download Neywo and explore Los Angeles at your own pace. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, with no group and no schedule.
Los Angeles is part of California, in the United States. If you are continuing through the region, you can also discover nearby destinations such as Long Beach, Laguna Beach, or Oceanside.
Places with an audio guide in Los Angeles
8 places in Los Angeles with a Neywo audio guide. Each one starts telling its story as you reach it.
Self-guided tours in Los Angeles
9 tours in Los Angeles, free in the Neywo app. Each stop tells its story as you reach it.
- Bike ride
Downtown LA on Two Wheels: Cathedral to Historic Core
Follow the bike lanes north from St. John's Cathedral near USC into downtown, past Patriotic Hall, the arena and the Grammy Museum, then through South Park and the Historic Core to a skyscraper, a former parking garage, a Broadway movie palace and the Board of Trade building.
St. John's Cathedral · Bob Hope Patriotic Hall · Crypto.com Arena · Grammy Museum · Wilshire Grand Center · South Park Lofts …
Open this tour: Downtown LA on Two Wheels: Cathedral to Historic Core - Bus ride
Metro 20: From Downtown Towers to Museum Row
Ride Wilshire Boulevard, the city's grand east-west avenue, from the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown through Westlake and Koreatown, past historic churches, to the Miracle Mile. Get off at El Rey, the La Brea Tar Pits, Urban Light, the Academy Museum and the Holocaust Museum LA, all within a few blocks of each other.
U.S. Bank Tower · Hayworth Theatre · Immanuel Presbyterian Church · St. Basil Catholic Church · Koreatown · Wilshire United Methodist Church …
Open this tour: Metro 20: From Downtown Towers to Museum Row - Walk
Hollywood Boulevard: Red Carpets and Movie Palaces
Walk the heart of Hollywood from the forecourt of the Chinese Theatre to the crossroads of Hollywood and Vine. Along the way you pass the wax figures of Madame Tussauds, the home of the Oscars, historic movie palaces, the old Max Factor salon and the stars of the Walk of Fame under your feet. Finish at the Art Deco Pantages and the Avalon, across from the Capitol Records tower.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre · Madame Tussauds Hollywood · Dolby Theatre · El Capitan Theatre · Hollywood Masonic Temple · The Hollywood Museum …
Open this tour: Hollywood Boulevard: Red Carpets and Movie Palaces - Walk
Museum Row: Tar Pits, Art and Automobiles
Stroll Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile from the Art Deco El Rey and the bubbling asphalt pits where Ice Age animals were trapped, through LACMA's courtyards, its Japanese pavilion and the street lamps of Urban Light. Then on to the architecture museum, a car museum that looks like a ribbon of steel, the film museum in a former department store and the giant boulder of Levitated Mass.
El Rey Theatre · Craft Contemporary · La Brea Tar Pits · George C. Page Museum · Pavilion for Japanese Art · Urban Light …
Open this tour: Museum Row: Tar Pits, Art and Automobiles - Walk
Bunker Hill: Gehry, Gold Rush Money and a Tiny Funicular
Climb Grand Avenue through downtown's cultural hill: a modern cathedral, the Music Center, Frank Gehry's steel-clad concert hall and two contemporary art museums. Pass a glass skyscraper and a grand 1923 hotel, ride the little railway of Angels Flight, then finish in a skylit 1893 atrium that Blade Runner made famous and a former cathedral that survived an earthquake.
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels · Dorothy Chandler Pavilion · Walt Disney Concert Hall · The Broad · Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles · Bank of America Plaza …
Open this tour: Bunker Hill: Gehry, Gold Rush Money and a Tiny Funicular - Walk
Where LA Began: El Pueblo, Chinatown and Little Tokyo
Trace the city from its 1781 founding at the old plaza through its oldest adobe, its first church and first theatre, past the Chinese and Italian American museums, and on to Little Tokyo: a former church turned arts centre, a Shingon temple, the Go For Broke memorial and the Japanese American National Museum. A walk through the communities that built Los Angeles.
Chinatown Gateway Monument · LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes · La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles · Avila Adobe · Merced Theatre · Chinese American Museum …
Open this tour: Where LA Began: El Pueblo, Chinatown and Little Tokyo - Walk
Exposition Park and USC: Shuttle, Stadium and Dinosaurs
Start at the heart of the University of Southern California with Tommy Trojan, then cross to Exposition Park: the natural history museum, the Olympic Coliseum, the Space Shuttle Endeavour at the science centre and the California African American Museum.
University of Southern California · Tommy Trojan · USC Fisher Museum of Art · Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County · Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum · Endeavour …
Open this tour: Exposition Park and USC: Shuttle, Stadium and Dinosaurs - Walk
Heritage Square and Mount Washington: Victorian Arroyo Seco
Visit the Arroyo Seco, where the city's early past was saved piece by piece: the old Southwest Museum on Mount Washington, the stone house Charles Lummis built by hand, and the Victorian mansions of Heritage Square.
Southwest Museum of the American Indian · Lummis House · Mount Pleasant House · Hale House · Heritage Square Museum
Open this tour: Heritage Square and Mount Washington: Victorian Arroyo Seco - Walk
Westwood Village: Campus, Cinemas and Hollywood Legends
Walk Westwood from a cemetery with famous names to the movie palaces and theatres of the Village, the Hammer Museum and the UCLA campus with its museum of world cultures.
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery · Majestic Crest Theatre · Hammer Museum · Regency Bruin Theatre · Geffen Playhouse · University of California, Los Angeles …
Open this tour: Westwood Village: Campus, Cinemas and Hollywood Legends
Walk Los Angeles with Neywo
Neywo turns Los Angeles into a self-guided audio tour. Stories arrive as you reach the place they belong to, and the route reshapes when you wander off it.
