Getty Villa

J. Paul Getty began collecting classical art in the 1930s, and by the 1950s he had opened a small gallery next to his ranch house on this hillside. The collection quickly outgrew it. Instead of building a conventional museum, Getty made a bold choice: he would recreate an entire ancient Roman villa to hold his Greek and Roman pieces, so that the art and its architecture belonged together. The building opened in 1974.

The house he chose to copy was the Villa dei Papiri, a lavish seaside residence outside the Roman town of Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples. When Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, the same eruption that destroyed nearby Pompeii, it buried the villa under volcanic mud that hardened and preserved it. Only part of it has ever been dug out, so Getty's architects filled in the unknown sections using other ancient Roman houses as guides. The result is not a guess but a careful reconstruction, from the tall columns to the bright wall paintings copied from real Roman rooms.

Inside, the Getty Villa holds around forty-four thousand Greek, Roman, and Etruscan objects that span from about 6,500 BC to 400 AD, with well over a thousand on display at any time. The galleries are arranged by theme and time, so you can follow gods and heroes, daily life, athletics, and the theater through marble statues, painted vases, carved gems, bronze figures, and glass. Among the most famous pieces are the Victorious Youth, a rare life-size Greek bronze pulled from the sea, and the Lansdowne Heracles, a powerful Roman marble.

The galleries surround open courtyards, so light and air move through the museum the way they would have in a real Roman house. After a renovation completed in the 2010s, the collection was rearranged in a clear chronological path that helps a first-time visitor make sense of centuries of art without needing to be an expert. Because so much of the setting is a recreation of a lived-in home, children and adults alike tend to grasp the ancient world here in a way a plain gallery rarely allows.

The gardens are as much of the visit as the art, and they are free to wander. The grand Outer Peristyle is a formal Roman garden built to the exact proportions of the one at the Villa dei Papiri, a long rectangle of clipped hedges, bronze statues, and Mediterranean plants around a reflecting pool more than two hundred feet long. Smaller courtyard gardens grow the herbs, fruit trees, and flowers a Roman household would actually have used for food, medicine, and offerings, which makes them a quiet lesson in daily ancient life.

The villa also has an open-air theater, modeled on the stepped stone theaters of the ancient world and set into the hillside facing the building's grand front. In the warm months it hosts staged productions of Greek and Roman plays under the evening sky. Even on an ordinary afternoon it is a fine place to sit, look back at the columned facade, and take in the view down the green canyon toward the Pacific.

The villa sits just off the Pacific Coast Highway at the eastern end of Malibu, an easy drive up the coast from Santa Monica. Admission is free, which is unusual for a collection of this quality, but you must reserve a timed entry ticket in advance, and parking is by advance reservation and carries a fee. Both fill up on weekends, so booking a day or two ahead is the difference between an easy arrival and a turned-away one.

Plan for a half day. It takes time to walk the galleries, sit in the gardens, and let the recreation do its work, and rushing undercuts the whole point of the place. Comfortable shoes help, since the grounds are large and terraced into the hillside. When you leave, the coast highway carries you straight back into the beaches and mountains of Malibu, so the villa slots easily into a coastal road trip rather than demanding a trip of its own.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.