The Getty Center

Richard Meier is known for crisp white architecture, and the Getty is his masterwork, but the site made him bend his rules. The Getty family wanted warmth and a connection to the land, so alongside his signature enameled panels Meier clad much of the campus in Italian travertine, sawn to expose the fossils and shells locked inside the stone. Run your hand along a wall and you can feel leaves and shells millions of years old. The pavilions step across the ridge so that the buildings, the sky, and the city below are always part of the same picture.

Getting there is half the fun. You park at the bottom of the hill and ride a three-car electric tram up the slope to the museum on the ridge, a short, quiet climb that separates the place from the freeway roar below and makes arriving feel like an event. By the time you step off at the top, the whole basin has opened up beneath you.

The Central Garden is not a decorative afterthought; it is a commissioned artwork by Robert Irwin, and he meant it that way. A stream tumbles down a stone course toward a pool where azaleas are planted in a floating maze, surrounded by more than five hundred kinds of plants chosen to shift constantly through the year. Irwin inscribed a line into the design: always changing, never twice the same. Come back in a different month and it genuinely is a different garden.

Beyond it the grounds keep giving. There are terraces and lawns, a cactus garden perched on a south promontory with one of the best views on the whole campus, and quiet corners to sit with the city laid out below. Many visitors spend as much time outside as in the galleries, and the Getty is designed to reward exactly that.

The collection at the Center concentrates on European art before the twentieth century: paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts, along with a strong holding of photography. The single most famous canvas is Vincent van Gogh's Irises, but there is Gauguin, Rembrandt-era work, and rooms of French furniture and manuscripts to reward a slow wander. Because admission is free, it is an easy place to visit for just an hour or for a whole day.

It is worth knowing that the Getty has a second home. The Getty Villa, out on the coast toward Malibu, is a separate site built to look like an ancient Roman country house and devoted to the arts of Greece, Rome, and the Etruscans. The Center is the modern hilltop of European painting and architecture; the Villa is the classical world by the sea. Both are free, and together they make a remarkable one-two of Los Angeles art.

The Getty sits right off the 405 in Brentwood, on the west side of Los Angeles, which makes it easy to reach but often busy. Admission is free, but you pay to park at the base of the hill and a timed reservation is frequently required, so book ahead and give yourself time to park, ride the tram up, and ride it back down.

Aim for a clear day, and if you can, stay into the late afternoon, when the low sun warms the travertine and the view stretches from the downtown towers to the glint of the Pacific. Wear shoes you can walk in, because the terraces, the garden, and the cactus overlook are as much the reason to come as anything hanging on the walls.

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