Los Angeles: City of Angels

Los Angeles: A World in One City

Los Angeles is perhaps the most misunderstood major city in the world. Dismissed by detractors as shallow, traffic-choked, and culturally thin, LA reveals extraordinary depths to anyone willing to look past the clichés — and what they find consistently astonishes them.

Los Angeles County is home to approximately 10.1 million people — more than the population of 40 individual U.S. states — making it by far the most populous county in the United States. The city itself, at 503 square miles, is the second-largest in the United States by area (after Anchorage, Alaska). Within its boundaries live people from virtually every nation on Earth, speaking over 200 languages, practicing every religion known to humanity, and bringing with them the full diversity of global culture.

This extraordinary diversity is not incidental to Los Angeles’s character — it is its character. Neighborhoods reflect decades and centuries of immigrant communities establishing their own cultural spaces: Koreatown, the largest Korean community outside Korea; Little Tokyo, preserving Japanese-American culture through a century of adversity; Tehrangeles (Westwood and Beverly Hills), home to the largest Persian diaspora community outside Iran; Boyle Heights, the heart of Los Angeles’s Mexican-American culture; and Leimert Park, the creative hub of LA’s African-American community. To travel through Los Angeles is to travel through the world.

Against this human backdrop stands one of the world’s most striking physical settings. The Los Angeles Basin is bounded by the Santa Monica Mountains to the north, the San Gabriel Mountains to the east, the Puente Hills to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Mountain ranges, coastal mesas, river corridors, and ocean frontage create a landscape of perpetual drama — particularly at sunset, when light off the Pacific turns the sky into orange, pink, and purple that seems almost too beautiful to be real.

Beverly Hills, Bel Air & the West Side

West of Hollywood, Los Angeles shifts into polished residential glamour. Beverly Hills is synonymous with luxury retail, celebrity homes, and carefully manicured boulevards. Rodeo Drive remains the district’s signature shopping street — a concentrated stretch of flagship fashion houses, jewelers, and people-watching that defines the global image of LA wealth.

Bel Air and the surrounding hills offer gated estates, winding canyon roads, and some of the most valuable residential real estate in the United States. Visitors come for scenic drives, upscale dining, and the contrast between hillside privacy and the showmanship of nearby Sunset Boulevard.

Further west, Westwood blends UCLA’s academic energy with museums, cinemas, and the Persian cultural corridor often called Tehrangeles — home to the largest Persian diaspora community outside Iran. Together, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and the broader West Side form a polished counterpoint to Hollywood’s neon and Downtown’s density.

• Rodeo Drive and the Golden Triangle for flagship shopping and architecture
• Sunset Boulevard corridors linking studios, hotels, and hillside viewpoints
• Westwood Village and UCLA for campus walks and cultural stops
• Scenic canyon drives toward Bel Air and the Santa Monica Mountains

Griffith Observatory & Griffith Park

Griffith Park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States — a rugged sweep of trails, brushy hillsides, and city overlooks rising above central Los Angeles. At its most famous crest sits Griffith Observatory, an Art Deco landmark that doubles as a public astronomy museum and the single best elevated viewpoint over the Los Angeles Basin for many first-time visitors.

From the observatory terraces, the Hollywood Sign, Downtown towers, and — on clear days — the Pacific come into a single panorama. Inside, exhibits, telescopes, and the planetarium make the stop as educational as it is scenic. Trails lace the surrounding park for hikers who want a longer approach, while the drive up remains one of LA’s essential visitor routes.

Sunset is the signature time: the same Pacific light that paints the basin orange and purple turns the observatory lawns into a communal viewing deck. Arrive early on weekends, bring layers for cooler hillside air, and pair the visit with a Hollywood day or a Griffith Park trail if you want more than the viewpoint alone.

• Panoramic terraces facing the Hollywood Sign and basin skyline
• Public astronomy exhibits and planetarium programming
• Hiking routes through Griffith Park’s extensive trail network
• Golden-hour and after-dark city-light views on clear evenings

Los Angeles belongs on any shortlist of the world’s great food cities. The same diversity that defines its neighborhoods fuels an unmatched dining landscape: Korean barbecue and late-night noodles in Koreatown, sushi counters and omakase temples, Mexican classics from Boyle Heights to East LA, Persian feasts in Tehrangeles, Japanese traditions in Little Tokyo, soulful cooking around Leimert Park, and chef-driven restaurants that draw international attention year after year.

Street-level LA eating is half the pleasure — taco stands, dumpling houses, seafood counters, bakery lines, and food halls reward curiosity more than rigid reservations. At the high end, tasting menus and destination dining rooms sit comfortably beside decades-old family institutions. Farmers markets and California produce culture keep menus seasonal even in a city famous for year-round sunshine.

For travelers, the winning strategy is geographic: pick a neighborhood, eat where that community eats, and let the next meal pull you across town. Hollywood may manufacture dreams, but Los Angeles’s kitchens manufacture the daily reason many visitors extend their stay.