Los Angeles

Overview

Los Angeles is a Pacific-edge metropolis built as a network of distinct districts rather than around a single centre — studio culture and Hollywood, a beach corridor from Santa Monica to the South Bay, a museum roster few American cities can match, and immigrant neighbourhoods whose food is the reason many people come back.

History

Los Angeles was founded in 1781 as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, a Spanish pueblo, and passed through Mexican and then American rule during the nineteenth century. Railways, oil and citrus drove the first booms; the film industry arrived in the 1910s looking for cheap land and reliable light and stayed; aerospace and the postwar suburban expansion did the rest. Water made all of it possible, brought from the Owens Valley by aqueduct from 1913, and the freeway network built through the mid-century locked in the polycentric shape the city still has. Successive waves of migration — from the American South and Midwest, then from Mexico, Central America, Korea, Iran, Armenia and the Philippines — produced the neighbourhood map that defines the city today far more than any downtown does.

Culture

Los Angeles eats by neighbourhood rather than by restaurant district. Koreatown runs barbecue, stews and late bars; East LA and Boyle Heights hold the taco stands and the city's Mexican canon; the San Gabriel Valley's regional Chinese cooking is widely rated the best in North America; and Thai Town, Little Armenia, Persian Westwood, Oaxacan Pico and Salvadoran Pico-Union each anchor their own. Food trucks remain central to how the city eats at night, and quality runs all the way down the price range rather than clustering at the top. Festivals: Awards season across late winter, when the industry's calendar takes over the city, LA Pride in June, Nisei Week in Little Tokyo, The 626 Night Market in the San Gabriel Valley, Día de los Muertos at Hollywood Forever and across East LA. Museums: Getty Center and Getty Villa, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The Broad, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, Japanese American National Museum, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Practical Info

Safety: Visitor districts are manageable with ordinary big-city sense. The recurring practical risk is property crime around parked cars — do not leave anything visible in a vehicle anywhere, including at trailheads and beach car parks, where break-ins are routine. At night, stick to areas with foot traffic outside the main entertainment corridors. Heat and fire conditions are the genuine environmental risks: check closures before driving into the canyons or the national forest in summer and autumn. Language: English, with Spanish woven through daily life across most of the city. Korean, Chinese languages, Armenian, Persian, Tagalog and Japanese are all widely used in their neighbourhoods, and the city's linguistic map is essentially its immigration map. Currency: USD, with cards and contactless accepted everywhere. Budget for the things that quietly add up here rather than for the sticker prices: parking, valet and ride-hail surcharges across a spread-out city. Sales tax is added at the register and tipping is expected — the [[link|/united-states/money|US money guide]] carries both properly.

Travel

Los Angeles works when you plan it by zone and fails when you plan it by map distance. The basin runs from the Pacific to the inland valleys, the districts that matter to a visitor are scattered across the whole of it, and traffic turns any straight line into an unreliable estimate — so the trip that works groups each day geographically and accepts that you will not cross town twice. Hollywood and the studio belt over the hill in Burbank carry the industry the city is known for. Downtown, written off for decades, now holds the best concentration of architecture, museums and food halls in the region. The Westside runs the beach corridor from Santa Monica through Venice down to the South Bay, with the Getty above it on its ridge. East and north-east of Downtown are the neighbourhoods where the city actually eats — and out beyond the city limits, the San Gabriel Valley holds Chinese food that people fly in for. The other thing worth knowing before you land: this is a city of specific pleasures rather than a checklist. The Walk of Fame disappoints almost everyone; a canyon hike at golden hour, a taco stand at midnight and an hour in the Getty gardens do not.

Frequently asked questions

Diplomatic missions in Los Angeles

10 embassies based in this city, grouped by region.