Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [93]
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
José Rafael Moneo mixed Gothic proportions with bold contemporary design for his 2002 Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (Map; 213-680-5200; www.olacathedral.org; 555 W Temple St; admission free; 6am-6pm Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm Sat, 7am-6pm Sun, to 7pm during daylight savings; ), which exudes a calming serenity achieved by soft light filtering in through alabaster panes. Art abounds from the moment you step through Robert Graham’s massive bronze doors guarded by a Madonna sculpture. Wall-sized tapestries as intricate and detailed as a Michelangelo fresco festoon the main nave. They depict 135 saints whose gaze is directed towards the main altar, a massive yet simple slab of red marble. Gregory Peck is buried in the beehive-like subterranean mausoleum.
Popular times to visit are for the 1pm weekday tours and the recitals at 12:45pm on Wednesday, both free.
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)
A collection that spans the arc of artistic vision from the 1940s to the present and includes works by Mark Rothko, Dan Flavin, Joseph Cornell and other big-shot contemporary artists give MOCA Grand Ave (Map; 213-626-6222; www.moca.org; 250 S Grand Ave; adult/student & senior/child under 12 $8/5/free, free 5-8pm Thu; 11am-5pm Mon & Fri, 11am-8pm Thu, 11am-6pm Sat & Sun; ) an edge in the art world. It’s housed in a postmodern building by Arata Isozaki, a minimalist masterpiece that unifies pared-down geometric shapes behind by a red sandstone facade. Galleries are below ground, yet flooded with natural light via pyramidal skylights. Check it out during tours (free with admission) offered at noon, 1pm and 2pm and don’t forget to swing by the bookstore gift shop, one of the best in town.
Tickets are also good for same-day admission at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Little Tokyo, a quick DASH bus ride away. Catch it at Grand Ave and 1st St.
The odd building next to MOCA, whose steeply pitched zinc roof makes it looks like an upside-down cake tin, is the Colburn School of Performing Arts (Map; 213-621-2200; www.colburnschool.edu; 200 S Grand Ave). Sometimes called the ‘Julliard of the West’, it’s a great place to keep tabs on tomorrow’s talent during concerts, most of them free, held during the school year (September to May).
California Plaza & Angels Flight
MOCA is dwarfed by the soaring California Plaza office tower whose outdoor water-court amphitheatre hosts the Grand Performances, one of the best free summer performance series Click here in the city. After a few breaks over the years, once again chugging down a steep incline to Hill St and Grand Central Market is Angels Flight, a historic funicular billed as the ‘shortest railway in the world’. The little trains first started operating in 1901 when this neighborhood was called Bunker Hill and was populated by Victorians, but they were mothballed when the area was redeveloped in the ’60s. Nostalgia revived them in the ’90s but only until a fatal derailment occurred in 2001. With new safety measures in place, operations eventually resumed in late 2007.
Wells Fargo History Museum
Sponsored by California-based Wells Fargo Bank, this small but intriguing museum (Map; 213-253-7166; www.wellsfargohistory.com/museums/lamuseum.html; 333 S Grand Ave; admission free; 9am-5pm Mon-Fri) chronicles the gold-rush era and the company’s role in it. See an original Concord stagecoach, a 100oz gold nugget, an old bank office and all sorts of other artifacts, or ask the staff to start the 15-minute video.
The exhibits are on the ground floor of the Wells Fargo Center, another huge office tower that’s filled with public art, including numerous nude sculptures by Robert Graham in the atrium and Jean Dubuffet’s cartoonish Le Dandy in the Hope St entrance vestibule.
Richard Riordan Central Library
One of the coolest buildings in town, the Egyptian-flavored