Los Angeles travel guide by district
From the Hollywood Hills to the beach at Venice and the towers downtown. Learn the neighborhoods at the heart of Los Angeles, find the places worth traveling for, and get to know the city in ten short sections.
- Population
- About 3.9 million (city, 2020)
- Area
- About 1,300 km² (city)
- Districts
- More than 100 neighborhoods, 21 mapped by name
- Language
- English and Spanish
- Founded
- Founded as a Spanish pueblo in 1781
- Best months
- April to June and September to November
Neighborhoods
Griffith Park
One of the largest city parks in the country, with trails up Mount Hollywood, the Griffith Observatory, the Los Angeles Zoo and the Greek Theatre.
From Griffith Park and the Hollywood Hills down to Exposition Park, east across the river to Boyle Heights and out west from Brentwood to Venice. Select a neighborhood to read it, then play the map and try finding all twenty-seven. The twenty-one central and Westside neighborhoods most visitors meet are named one by one; the rest of the city is grouped into its regions, from the San Fernando Valley to the Harbor, so the map covers the whole city. The second round leaves the city for forty-five suburbs and regions, one unbroken spread from Ventura and Santa Clarita to the beach towns of the South Bay and Orange County, with Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Pasadena among them.
A little Los Angeles before you go
Geography & significance
A dry basin between the mountains and the sea.
The Los Angeles basin gets only about 15 inches of rain a year. In 1913 William Mulholland's Los Angeles Aqueduct began carrying water about 230 miles from the Owens Valley, and later canals brought more from the Colorado River and Northern California. Los Angeles is Spanish for the angels. The settlement founded in 1781 was named for Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, a title of the Virgin Mary tied to the Porciúncula chapel of Saint Francis, and the long name was soon cut down to Los Angeles.
With about 3.9 million people in the city and more than 12 million in its metropolitan area, Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the United States. It passed Chicago in the 1990 census. Los Angeles lies close to the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. The San Andreas Fault runs through the mountains to the north, and a hidden fault under the San Fernando Valley caused the Northridge earthquake of 1994, which killed 57 people.
Commonly asked2 questions
- Why does Los Angeles bring its water from hundreds of miles away?
- The Los Angeles basin gets only about 15 inches of rain a year. In 1913 William Mulholland's Los Angeles Aqueduct began carrying water about 230 miles from the Owens Valley, and later canals brought more from the Colorado River and Northern California.
- What does the name Los Angeles mean?
- Los Angeles is Spanish for the angels. The settlement founded in 1781 was named for Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, a title of the Virgin Mary tied to the Porciúncula chapel of Saint Francis, and the long name was soon cut down to Los Angeles.
The places you came to see
Griffith Observatory
A free Art Deco observatory of 1935 with a planetarium, telescopes open to the public and views across the basin to the ocean.
Fifteen landmarks, museums, parks and waterfront stops. Essential is our starting shortlist for a first visit; worth a detour helps you go further. These are editorial priorities, not visitor-number rankings.
Keep going one place deeper
When you have had your fill of Los Angeles, the country around it has a guide of its own, and there are more cities to explore.
District boundaries: Los Angeles Times Mapping L.A.. Neighborhood boundaries from the Los Angeles Times Mapping L.A. project, retrieved September 2026 and simplified for display. The city has no official neighborhood map; twenty-one of its neighborhoods are shown by name and the rest grouped into regions. Suburbs from U.S. Census Bureau boundaries. This learning map is not a survey or a boundary authority. Boundary source and license. Guide references: City of Los Angeles, Discover Los Angeles, LA Metro. Check official attraction sites for current admission and access details. Photographs are from Wikimedia Commons and credited on each one.