The 5 most interesting walking tours

The nonprofit Los Angeles Conservancy is the largest preservation group of its kind and the group responsible for safeguarding many of the city’s most treasured historic places. The group’s knowledgeable docents host weekly walking tours focused on specific styles (Art Deco) or areas (downtown’s historic core, the Broadway Theatre District).

The nonprofit organization Hollywood Heritage oversaw the restoration and preservation of this 1901 structure, the Lasky-DeMille Barn, which was the actual building where director Cecil B. DeMille had his office, and his studio staff worked and played. Today, the barn houses the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

Every Saturday this preservation organization hosts a two-hour walking tour (comprising only of six blocks) that retraces Santa Monica’s history from its Wild West days to how it became the vibrant community it is today.

This small museum boasts an interesting collection of materials about unsung aspects of the Valley’s history. They also sponsor occasional walking tours that give patrons a firsthand experience of the Valley’s past. Themes of tours include celebrity homes, haunted sites, and an exploration of Van Nuys.

Jonathan Kaplan takes you backwards in time on his fantastic walking tours of Venice, starting with the dreamer Abbot Kinney and his vision of ‘Venice of America’. Sharing film clips and other memorabilia along the way, Kaplan captures the beauty and the funk of this area from Muscle Beach to Silicon Beach.