And to finish the story of the tourist attractions of Los Angeles, nothing better than some cinemas and museums, an amphitheater and an archaeological site all in one city!! wanna check it out?
El Capitain Theater: opened in 1926 with the premiere of the Broadway play ‘Charlot’s Revue’, and dubbed “Hollywood’s First Home of Spoken Drama”, El Capitain Theater for a decade has staged over 120 live Productions. After almost 20 years, the theater was transformed into a movie theater. Over the Years, El Capitan has changed owners and names, for example in 1942 it reopened as the Hollywood Paramount Theater owned by Paramount Pictures. However, in 1989, the Walt Disney Company acquired the building, making a 2-years renovation to recreate its original appearance with a Spanish colonial style and interior inspired by the East Indies, being reopened with the premiere of ‘The Rocketeer’. Today, El Capitan Theater is a cultural heritage site in Los Angeles and is home to Disney movie premieres. Beside it there is the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain & Chocolate Shop (Ghirardelli store and restaurant) and the Disney Studio Store (shop for items related to Disney films). Want to know more, visit the website.
The Egyptian Theater: originally called Grauman’s Egyptian Theater opened in 1922, it is a movie palace that had its first premiere in the movie Robin Hood. Built by Sid Grauman, it was owned and operated by the American Cinematheque (cultural organization). Located on Hollywood Blvd., the original theater seated 1,760 spectators, but after restoration and reconfiguration, the Egyptian Theater now has two movie theaters, one with 616 seats and named after Lyoyd E. Rigler (Los Angeles philanthropist) and another with 78 seats named Steven Spielberg. To learn more, visit the website or Facebook page.
Hollywood Bowl: opened in 1929, the Hollywood Bowl is considered the largest outdoor amphitheater in Southern California, seating 17,376 people. Well known for its shell shape, the amphitheater is owned by Los Angeles County, home to the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra (managed by Los Angeles Philarmonic Association) and home to numerous concerts (by artists like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars) and events (like Jazz World Music and movie nights with live soundtrack by the Los Angeles Philharmonic). In the same complex, there is the Edmund D. Edelman Hollywood Bowl Museum, a museum opened in 1996, which celebrates one of the historic landmarks of Los Angeles, which played an important role in music, entertainment and helped shape the careers of some of the most famous artists. Want to know more about the Hollywood Bowl, visit the website. And to learn more about the Hollywood Bowl Museum, visit here.
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County: opened in 1913 as part of the Museum of History, Science and Art of Los Angeles, only in 1961 did it become an independent museum, changing its name to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Today the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has three floors of permanent and temporary exhibits, with Around 35 million species and artifacts representing more than 4.5 billion years of history. The museum also has an area for researchers, where they work on the restoration and conservation of fossils. It is open every day from 9:30 am to 5pm. Want to know more, visit the website.
Ripley’s Believe it or not Hollywood: the museum has more than 10,000 square meters and more than 300 exotic and unusual objects, such as the signed script for the movie Pirates of Caribbean, a piece of the Berlin Wall and a one-eyed sheep. Ripley’s Believe it or not was created by Robert Leroy Ripley, a caricaturist and philanthropist, passionate about strange happenings, who dedicated half his life to collecting strange pieces from around the world. Today the network has 30 museums located in differents countries. To learn more, visit the website or their Facebook page.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art: established as an independent museum in 1961, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was born as part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. Also known as LACMA, it has more than 135,000 dated works, from antiquity to the contemporary era, having as main artists Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Tony Smith, among others. Considered the largest museum in the western United States and one of the most important centers of art and culture in the country, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has some free outdoor works, as Cris Burden’s Urban Light (which consists of restored streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s that lit up the streets of Southern California) and Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass (a 340-ton stone positioned on a walkway, which causes a mixture of curiosity and fear), it also offers temporary exhibitions, jazz shows, film screenings, restaurants and alternative events. The museum is open from Thursday to Tuesday, and tickets range from US$10 to US$25. Want to know more, visit the website.
La Brea Tar Pits: La Brea is an archaelogical site, located in Hancock Park, in downtown Los Angeles, which has several tar pools formed tens of thousands of years ago. Research work began at the start of the 20th century and today results in a rich collection of fossils from the Last Ice Age with more than 231 species of vertebrates, 159 species of plants and 234 species of invertebrates. Among the discoveries, they found a 46,800-year-old coyote, a 44,000-year-old saber-toothed tiger, and a human being (partial skeleton of a woman from approximately 9,000 BC). Within Hancock Park there is also the George C. Page Museum, part of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where it is possible to find the fossils taken from the tar pools also the Fossil Lab (a laboratory, in which volunteers help scientists to clean and catalog the fossils), a souvenir shop, among other things. The space is open every day from 9:30 am to 5pm. To learn more, visit the website.
The Original Farmers Market: opened in 1934, The Original Farmers Market was originally a dairy farm then became an oil extraction area and it wasn’t until after the Great Depression that two entrepreneurs, Fred Beck and Roger Dahlhjelm, came up with the idea of inviting local farmers to sell their crops to the public. Today it has more than 100 stores and restaurants with a variety of products and delicacies from various nationalities, such as Korean, Japanese, Thai, Spanish, Brazilian, Mexican and Greek. The symbol of the world for food and fun and the Farmers Market is the Clock Tower, built in 1948 and located above Starbucks. The market is open from Monday to Saturday from 9am to 6pm and on Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Want to know more, visit the website.
The Grove: considered one of the best malls in Los Angeles, The Grove Mall opened in 2002, it was founded by Nordstrom. The open-air mall, popular with celebrities, has a variety of stores (such as MAC, Zara, Apple Store, Forever 21, Victoria’s Secrets, Nike, GAP, among many others), Craft stalls, a movie theater (Pacific Theater) and an electric trolley system that connects you to The Original Farmers Market (next door). The Grove, in mid-November, displayed its Christmas tree (one of the tallest in the Los Angeles area) nightly, which begins with an annual lighting ceremony. To learn more, visit the website.
What did you think of these sights??
And these were just a few of the many must-see places in Los Angeles, the film capital of the world!!
Stay tuned for the next post on Let’s Travel the World for some tips!!
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