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Pasadena’s historic business district along western Colorado Boulevard was once a decaying part of town, but has now been restored. Today, its handsome brick buildings are packed with boutiques, restaurants, and bookstores. A short detour will take you to the imposing 1898 Castle Green, an apartment building that was once Old Pasadena’s most luxurious resort hotel.

Grace Nicholson, infatuated with all things Asian, had her 1920s private home designed to look like a Chinese imperial palace. It now makes a fitting setting for this museum’s artifacts from Asia and the Pacific Islands. Exhibits, usually drawn from the 14,000-strong collection, feature masks from New Guinea, paintings by Japanese masters Hokusai and Hiroshige, and woven costumes from Pakistan.

The 130 showrooms of this vast complex display the finest in furniture, fabrics, lighting, and accessories. A contemporary 1975 design by Cesar Pelli, the most striking feature of the PDC is the gleaming blue glass façade, which has earned it the nickname “The Blue Whale.” The clover-green addition dates from 1988. On the plaza behind the PDC is a branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art , showcasing architecture and design.

You won’t find mammoths, saber-toothed cats, or dire wolves in any zoo, but they are the stars of this museum offering a look at life in LA during the last Ice Age thousands of years ago. Since 1906, excavations at the pits adjacent to the museum have yielded more than one million fossilized bones of about 450 species, from insects to birds and mammals. Many are now on display at the museum, which also houses a glass-walled laboratory where paleontologists may be seen working. Outside the museum, life-size replicas of mammoths trapped in muck dramatize the ghastly fate of Los Angeles’s prehistoric denizens.

This posh enclave straddling a rocky precipice is one of the most exclusive in America. A drive along its coastline affords great ocean views with Catalina Island in the distance. Malaga Cove and Abalone Cove are popular for tidepool explorations and Point Vicente for whale-watching. Flower lovers should head inland to the sprawling South Coast Botanic Garden.

This grand complex was inspired by the early 20th-century City Beautiful movement. It consists of three European-style Beaux-Arts structures stretching along a central axis – the Main Library, the Civic Auditorium, and the City Hall. Architect Myron Hunt designed the public library.

Pasadena art collectors, Robert and Arlene Oltman, occupy the third floor of their 2002 custom-built museum, the only one in the state solely devoted to the art and architecture of California. Watercolors, photographs, and the works of historical as well as living artists are showcased.