Explore Pasadena

The Norton Simon Museum on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena shows the collection assembled by the industrialist Norton Simon, who took over the former Pasadena Art Museum in 1974. It holds European art from the Renaissance to the 20th century, with works by Raphael, Rembrandt, Degas and Van Gogh, and sculpture from South and Southeast Asia.

The Gamble House in Pasadena was built in 1908 by the architects Charles and Henry Greene as a winter home for David and Mary Gamble of Procter & Gamble. It is a key work of the American Arts and Crafts movement, with deep eaves, sleeping porches and hand-crafted teak and mahogany interiors, and is shown on guided tours.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, next to Pasadena, was founded in 1919 by the railway magnate Henry E. Huntington. Its library holds rare books and manuscripts such as a Gutenberg Bible; the art collections include Gainsborough's The Blue Boy, and some 49 hectares of themed gardens surround the buildings.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Temple Street is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Designed by Rafael Moneo and consecrated in 2002, it replaced the old cathedral damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Its ochre concrete walls avoid right angles, and alabaster panes filter the light into the nave.

Walt Disney Concert Hall on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles is the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 2003, it is clad in curved stainless-steel panels; inside, the 2,265-seat hall has acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, and a garden on the upper level is open to visitors.

The Broad is a museum of contemporary art on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, opened in 2015 to show the collection of Eli and Edythe Broad. The building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro wraps the galleries in a white honeycomb-like shell, and the collection of some 2,000 works includes art by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, or MOCA, was founded in 1979 and shows art made since 1940. Its main building on Grand Avenue, designed by Arata Isozaki in red sandstone and opened in 1986, holds a collection of some 7,000 works, with abstract expressionism, pop art and art from Los Angeles.

Griffith Observatory stands on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park and opened in 1935. The Art Deco building holds exhibitions on astronomy, the Samuel Oschin Planetarium and a Zeiss refracting telescope open to the public on clear evenings, and its terraces look out over Los Angeles and the Hollywood Sign.

Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park, East Hollywood, was Frank Lloyd Wright's first commission in Los Angeles, built from 1919 to 1921 for the oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. Its massive walls and roof terraces carry a stylised hollyhock motif. Part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing since 2019, it is shown as a house museum.