The Fine Arts Building on West 7th Street is aptly named. Not because its 12 storeys house Fine Art – they don’t, they are offices – but because the building itself is unique in Los Angeles.

Built in 1926 by the architects Walter and Eisen, the façade is Romanesque Revival with a two storey Romanesque arch over the main entrance with decorative artwork over the doors featuring griffons, gargoyles and birds. On the jambs you will notice carved figures that look like saints so you might be forgiven if you think you are about to enter a church. On each side of the main arch are reclining statues of Architecture and Sculpture. Other sculptured figures can be seen near the top of the building.

The lobby is quite amazing. It is two-storey and decorated in terracotta and tile with a tiered ceiling and arches. In the centre of the lobby is a small fountain with two statues kneeling in the water and another in the middle that reaches towards the ceiling. Around the walls are figures representing architecture, ceramics, painting and textile arts. There are also the original 1928 showcases, which were destined to hold exhibition pieces. Over the three elevators are the original dials to indicate the floor numbers.

The building was renovated in 1983 and carefully restored to its original beauty by the developers Ratkovich and Bowers and the architect Brenda Levin and is classed a Historic Culture Monument.

The US Bank Tower isn’t open to public tours, but you should go and see this wonderful building anyway, which is one of the city’s icons and is the 47th tallest building in the world.

The building, also known as the Library Tower, stands on West 5th Street in Los Angeles’ business area. It is 310 metres high, with 73 storeys and two underground parking levels. Built of glass and steel with a white granite curtain wall, it was designed to resist an earthquake of up to 8 on the Richter scale. Its architecture of overlapping spirals and cubes make the building both circular and square. It was built in 1989 by the architects Pei Cobb Freed and Partners.

On top of the building, in accordance with building laws, there is a heliport – the highest in the world. The glass crown on top of the tower is illuminated at night; the colours vary depending on the day, the season and even on which of Los Angeles baseball or basketball teams is playing in the city.

You will probably recognize the tower, as it has been used as the backdrop of various films – it has the distinction of being the first building destroyed by the aliens in Independence Day!
While the tower isn’t open to casual visitors, you can take photos of it, but sometimes the security guards are over-enthusiastic about stopping tourists taking snaps and they are often rather rude.

No classical music lover should pass up a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on South Grand Avenue. It is the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. It is considered one of the best concert halls in the world.

The building was built by Frank Gehry and it opened in 2003. $50 million was initially donated by Lillian Disney, Walt Disney’s widow, but sadly she died six years before the concert hall was finished. The building is on six levels and its elegant stainless steel curves are formed to resemble a bowl of white roses as a tribute to its generous benefactress.

The building far surpassed its original estimated cost – the underground parking alone cost $110 million – and the difference was made up by private donations; the Walt Disney Company gave around $25 million and Walt Disney’s family added another $80 million.

The hall’s magnificent acoustics were designed by Yasuhisa Toyota. The sound in the concert hall is so good that during rehearsals the orchestra’s conductor realized that there were printing mistakes in the music scores of “Daphnis and Chloé”, Ravel’s orchestrated ballet. These scores had been in circulation for years, but it was the first time anyone heard the mistakes!

The exterior walls of the Founders Room and the Children’s Amphitheatre once had highly polished stainless steel panels, but refraction caused sunlight to shine directly into surrounding homes, so the panels were sanded down to a matt finish.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is the Mother Church of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and holds the cathedra of the Archbishop. It is a Roman Catholic Church unlike any other you will see in the city.

The church was built in 2002 to replace the Cathedral of St Vibiana which was damaged during an earthquake in 1994. The plans to demolish the old cathedral to build the new were stopped by conservationists, who wanted the new church incorporated into the old. This was impossible if the building was to meet with seismic laws, so a new site was found.

Built by the architect Rafeal Moneo, the church is startlingly postmodern, with no right angles and a base isolated structure. The windows are of alabaster instead of stained glass and the doors are in sculpted bronze.

The interior is softly lit and you can admire tapestries of the Communion of Saints by John Nava, a postmodern statue of the Virgin Mary by Robert Graham and a huge pipe organ, 60 ft high and set 24ft off the ground. The 6019 pipes include many from the 1929 organ from the Cathedral of St Vibiana.

The church stands on a 6 acre plaza with gardens, fountains, a mausoleum with 1270 crypts, a gift shop, a cafeteria and a conference centre.

If you would like to know how the rich lived in Los Angeles in the 19th century, do visit the Avila Adobe on Olvera Street. It is part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monuments.

This is the oldest residence still standing in Los Angeles. It was built in 1818 by Francisco Avila, a wealthy cattle rancher, as a weekend and holiday home. He entertained friends here and traded his hides and tallow for fine furniture and the building’s wooden window and door frames.

The walls, built out of adobe bricks that had been sundried, are three feet thick. Once the floors were of hard-packed earth, but later varnished wooden planks were added. The ceilings are over 15ft high with cottonwood beams and the large rooms have many windows.

After Francisco Avila’s death, his widow lived in the house until her death and it passed on to her children. Between 1868 and 1920 it was used as a restaurant and a bed and board. The area was a poor one and in 1926 the City Health Department decided to demolish the house.

Luckily for history fans, an Englishwoman, Christine Sterling, who was interested in the city’s historical heritage, started a public campaign to save the building. Private donations flooded in from all round the city and the building was restored. The police department organized the prisoners of the county jail into work-groups and they cleaned up the surrounding plaza, turning it into a Mexican-style market-place.

Today only seven rooms remain of the original, larger house. They are open to the public as a house museum furnished as they would have been in Adobe’s time. You can see a four-poster bed, the family dining area, children’s ragdolls and, in the kitchen, an enormous washtub for bathing.

A lot of tourists visit the Los Angeles City Hall, not to see the mayor, but to visit the observation point on the 27th floor, which will give you a wonderful view out over the city – and even Catalina Island on a clear day.

The building, which stands on North Spring Street, was built in 1928 to designs by Parkinson, Austin and Martin. Its Art Deco/Art Modern façade is 138m high and has 32 storeys. Apart from the mayor’s office, it also houses the Los Angeles City Council Chambers and offices.

The tower is built of concrete symbolically made from sand taken from each of California’s 58 counties and mixed with water from the state’s 21 Spanish missions, which spread the Christian faith among the Native Americans between 1769 and 1823. The topmost part of the tower was inspired by the description of the Mausoleum of Mausolus in Halicarnassus.

In 1994, after the Northridge earthquake, the curtain wall terracotta and granite façade was restored. Between 1998 and 2001, the building was given a seismic retrofit and 526 base isolators were fitted, making it the tallest base isolated structure in the world, capable of withstanding an earthquake of up to 8 on the Richter scale.

While you are walking along South Broadway, you might pass the Bradbury Building with barely a second glance at its simple Italian Renaissance Revival façade. If you have, turn around and go back, or you will kick yourself later for missing one of the gems of this city.

The exterior isn’t really very interesting, but the interior is quite simply breath-taking. The building, the oldest commercial structure in Los Angeles, was commissioned in 1893 by self-made mining and real estate millionaire, Lewis Bradbury.

Bradbury first approached Sumner Hunt to design it for himself, but he wasn’t pleased with the results. The project was given to Hunt’s draughtsman George Wyman, who had no architectural experience. According to legend, during a séance on an Ouija-board, Wyman’s dead brother told him to take on the project. Wyman was inspired by “Looking Forward”, a book by Edward Bellamy, who gave his idea of how an office building would look in the year 2000.

The five storey interior is centered round a “courtyard”, naturally lit by the glass roof far overhead. This courtyard isn’t particularly wide, but it is amazing, with its pale brick walls and Mexican-tile floor. There are two open-cage elevators with wrought iron gates. At each end of the building, geometric staircases lead to the floor above. The staircases and walkways overlooking the court are a delight of wrought iron filigree and highly polished wood.

The interior has been used as the backdrop of many TV series and films, notably “Blade-Runner”, as a poster on the wall proudly claims. Visitors are welcome, but only to the lobby and the 1st floor. The staff in the lobby are helpful and will give you details about the building, which is now used as private offices.