Griffith Observatory on a Los Angeles Layover
Part of the full Los Angeles Layover: Downtown Walk From LAX
Griffith Observatory sits on the south slope of Mount Hollywood above Los Angeles, free to walk into, with a public telescope on its roof, a terrace looking straight across at the Hollywood Sign and a shaded creek path up to it from Fern Dell.
Griffith Observatory has never charged admission since it opened in 1935
Griffith Observatory stands at 2800 East Observatory Road, a white art deco building with one large central dome and two smaller ones, put up with money Griffith J. Griffith left the city on the condition that the public never be charged to use it. That condition has held since it opened in May 1935: the building, the exhibit halls and the terraces are all free, every day it is open, which is Tuesday to Sunday until 10pm.
Inside, the rotunda has a Foucault pendulum swinging in a well in the floor, tracking the earth’s rotation through the day, and the hall beyond runs demonstrations on a Tesla coil that draw a crowd on the hour. The one thing here that charges is the Samuel Oschin Planetarium under the central dome, at $12 for adults, $8 for children, sold only at the building itself and only for that day’s shows, so it cannot be booked ahead from a plane. A guided walk through the observatory and its planetarium can be, if you would rather have the exhibits explained than read them.
The Zeiss refractor on the east roof is free to look through after dark
The telescope on the east roof is a 12-inch Zeiss refractor, installed when the building opened, and it is pointed at something worth seeing every clear evening from around 7pm to 9:30pm with a member of staff at the eyepiece. Nobody is charged and nothing is booked.
The queue is the real cost, twenty minutes or so on a busy Saturday and much less midweek. On clear nights amateur astronomers also set up their own instruments on the lawn outside and let anyone look, which is the faster option when the roof queue is long. The observatory has kept a running count of visitors at the eyepiece since 1935, and reckons more people have looked through this telescope than any other.
The observatory terrace looks straight across at the Hollywood Sign
The terraces on the west and north sides of the observatory look straight across a canyon at Mount Lee, and the Hollywood Sign sits on the ridge in plain sight from them, with a broadcast mast above it. It is a distant view rather than a close one, the letters read as a white row along the hillside, but it is unobstructed, free, and the most reliable place in the city to see the thing without a car.
Getting closer means walking. The Charlie Turner trailhead beside the observatory car park is where the Mount Hollywood paths start, and they climb into open, unshaded chaparral within a few minutes; a guided morning hike up to the sign viewpoints covers the route without the map-reading. If you are looking at the letters from street level down in the entertainment district instead, the Hollywood Boulevard walk is the version of this view from below.
Fern Dell’s shaded creek path starts at Los Feliz Boulevard
Fern Dell runs along Fern Dell Drive at the southern edge of Griffith Park, a narrow canyon where a stream has been channelled between stone banks and planted with ferns and subtropical growth since the 1920s. It is dense, shaded and about fifteen degrees more comfortable than the exposed hillside above it, with wooden footbridges crossing at intervals and benches along the water.
It is also the bottom of the footpath up to the observatory: the loop from here to the building and back is about 2.6 miles with 613 feet of climb, an hour and a half at a steady pace. The first quarter-mile through the glade is flat and easy, and the climb starts once the trees run out. Between that gradient and the steps up from the car park at the top, a suitcase turns the last stretch into something you carry rather than roll.
The Greek Theatre has staged open-air concerts in Griffith Park since 1930
The Greek Theatre is the 5,900-seat amphitheatre in the wooded lower part of Griffith Park, off Vermont Canyon Road, and it opened on 25 September 1930. Griffith J. Griffith left money in his will specifically to build it, on the 3,000 acres he had given the city in 1896, and Samuel Tilden Norton and Frederick Hastings Wallis modelled the stage and raked seating on Greek originals.
It runs as a concert venue from spring to autumn and is gated shut the rest of the time, so on most afternoons this is a building to look at from the road rather than somewhere to go in. It is on the shuttle route between the underground station and the observatory, which makes it a two-minute stop rather than a detour.
Vermont/Sunset is the subway station at the bottom of the hill
The DASH Observatory shuttle connects the observatory lawn to the Vermont/Sunset station on the Metro B Line for 50 cents, or 35 cents with a transit card, every fifteen minutes until its last departure from the station at 9:45pm. From Vermont/Sunset the B Line runs south to 7th St/Metro Center, then it is the E Line west to Expo/Crenshaw, the K Line south to the LAX/Metro Transit Center and a free shuttle from Bus Bays 1 and 2 into the terminals at Los Angeles International Airport.
That is four changes end to end, so allow three hours from the hill for the trip, check-in and security, and note the trains stop around midnight while the observatory does not close until 10pm. With less time than that, the downtown walk from the Broadway market up Bunker Hill is on the same subway line and much closer to the airport connection.
Frequently asked questions
When is Griffith Observatory open?
Tuesday to Friday from noon to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 10pm, and closed all day Monday. Those late closing times are the useful part on a flight day: the building is still open long after most museums in Los Angeles have shut, so an evening slot works here in a way it would not downtown.
Can you look through the telescope at Griffith Observatory?
Yes, and it costs nothing. The 12-inch Zeiss refractor on the east roof is open to the public from about 7pm to 9:30pm on every evening the building is open, weather permitting, and staff point it at whatever is worth looking at that night. There is a queue and it moves steadily; the other, smaller telescopes set up on the lawn by volunteers on clear nights are free too.
How do you get to Griffith Observatory without a car?
A shuttle bus runs up the hill from the nearest underground station every fifteen minutes from 10am, costs 50 cents, or 35 cents if you tap a transit card, and stops on the observatory's front lawn. The last one leaves the station at 9:45pm. The alternative is the footpath up from Fern Dell, which is a genuine 600-foot climb rather than a stroll.
What is there to do at Griffith Observatory when it is cloudy?
Most of it still works. The exhibit halls, the Foucault pendulum in the rotunda and the Tesla coil demonstrations are all indoors and all free, and the planetarium is a sealed dome that does not care what the sky is doing, at $12 for adults. What a grey evening costs you is the rooftop telescope, which only opens on clear nights, and the view over the basin from the terrace.