Downtown Los Angeles is easier to explore on foot than its reputation suggests, and its civic centre packs a lot into a few blocks. This guide covers five places on and around Bunker Hill and the Civic Center: Gloria Molina Grand Park, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Bradbury Building, City Hall with the park around it, and the Triforium, an unusual 1970s light sculpture. All five are stops on our Los Angeles scavenger hunt.
Gloria Molina Grand Park
Grand Park runs down the hill from the Music Center to City Hall, a long green space that replaced an older, little-used civic mall between government buildings. From the top you look straight down the park to the tower of City Hall. It opened in 2012, designed by the landscape architects Rios Clementi Hale Studios, and in 2022 it was renamed after Gloria Molina, the Los Angeles County supervisor who championed it. Concerts, festivals and New Year's Eve celebrations are held here. It is the first stop of our scavenger hunt, and a good place to start because it gives you a clear picture of how the Civic Center fits together.
- The bright magenta chairs and benches, a signature of the park's design.
- The Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain near the top of the park, with a shallow pool where children paddle on hot days.
Walt Disney Concert Hall
On Grand Avenue stands Frank Gehry's concert hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since it opened in October 2003. The project began with a gift of 50 million dollars from Lillian Disney, Walt Disney's widow, in 1987, but took sixteen years to complete. Its curved stainless-steel walls look like billowing sails. The polished panels of one section reflected sunlight so strongly onto neighbouring buildings that they had to be dulled after the opening. Inside, the main auditorium is lined with Douglas fir. It is a stop on the scavenger hunt.
- The public garden on the upper level, reached by stairs from the street, with views over Downtown.
Bradbury Building
A few blocks south, on Broadway, the Bradbury Building looks plain from outside, but inside it opens into a five-storey light court with ornate cast-iron railings, open-cage lifts, marble stairs and a glass roof. It was completed in 1893 and designed by George Wyman for the mining millionaire Lewis Bradbury. According to a well-known legend, Wyman, a draughtsman with little formal training, only accepted the job after a message from his dead brother at a Ouija board told him to. The interior has appeared in many films, most famously Blade Runner. Visitors can usually look into the lobby; the upper floors are offices. It is a stop on the scavenger hunt.
- The cast-iron balustrades and the light falling through the glass roof onto the central court.
Los Angeles City Hall and City Hall Park
Completed in 1928, City Hall was designed by John Parkinson, John C. Austin and Albert C. Martin. At about 138 metres, it was the tallest building in the city for decades, because until 1957 other buildings were limited in height. The concrete of its tower is said to contain sand from each of California's counties and water from its historic Spanish missions. The tower has appeared on police badges in television series and was destroyed by Martians in the 1953 film The War of the Worlds.
The lawns and trees around the building form a small city park, listed by the city's parks department as City Hall Park Center, a pleasant place to sit between the government buildings. Both City Hall and City Hall Park Center are stops on the scavenger hunt.
- The observation deck near the top of the tower, with views across the city to the mountains.
- The rotunda inside, with its domed ceiling and marble floor.
Triforium
Just north of City Hall, in Fletcher Bowron Square, stands the Triforium, a 60-foot sculpture by the artist Joseph Young, dedicated in December 1975. Three concrete pillars hold 1,494 Venetian glass prisms that were meant to light up in time with music, controlled by a computer; in Young's original plan, passers-by would even trigger light and sound with their movements. The technology never worked reliably, a bell carillon was disconnected, and for years the sculpture was mocked as too expensive to fix but too expensive to tear down.
Local campaigners later brought it back: its lights were switched on again in 2006 after a small repair, and a further upgrade followed from 2016 with a grant from the LA2050 initiative. It is one of the scavenger hunt stops.
- The coloured prisms, best seen after dark when the lights are on.
How to see them in one walk
Start at the top of Grand Park by the Music Center and walk up Grand Avenue to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. From there, head south past The Broad, the contemporary art museum that opened next door in 2015, and MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, down to Pershing Square, set aside as a public square in 1866, and along to the Bradbury Building on Broadway. All of these are scavenger hunt stops too. Then walk north through the Civic Center to City Hall and its park, and finish at the Triforium on Temple Street. If you can, come back to the Triforium after dark to see its coloured lights glowing over the square.
See Los Angeles with World City Trail
Our Los Angeles scavenger hunt turns Downtown into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from Grand Park to the Vietnam Memorial, and all the places in this guide are among them: Grand Park, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Bradbury Building, City Hall Park Center, City Hall and the Triforium.
If you prefer a different format, there is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Los Angeles.
Play the Los Angeles scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Los Angeles →
Play the outdoor escape game in Los Angeles →
Facts checked in October 2026.