Walking Beverly Hills film sets in Los Angeles

Rodeo Drive and the Beverly Wilshire

Rodeo Drive and Two Rodeo (Beverly Hills) is three blocks of flagship glass storefronts under palms. The part you have seen on screen is Via Rodeo, the cobbled lane that curves and climbs to the 'Spanish Steps' past gas lamps, with a small fountain plaza at the top and 208 Rodeo's terrace above it. The lane, the steps and the fountain are public ground, free to walk and free to photograph. Shops open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Saturday, and each boutique sets its own door policy.

At the bottom of the street is the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel (foot of Rodeo Drive), with its 1928 Italian Renaissance limestone facade, a curved porte-cochère under flags and doormen, and the cobbled El Camino Real driveway running between the two wings. This is the Pretty Woman hotel and still a working five-star. The lobby is open to anyone, and THEBlvd and CUT, both $$$, take bookings. A coffee at THEBlvd buys you the lobby legitimately. The door team moves large unbooked groups on, so reserve for anything over six.

The Beverly Hills Hotel and the Beverly Hilton

The Beverly Hills Hotel (Sunset Boulevard) is the Pink Palace: flamingo-pink stucco, green-and-white banana-leaf striped awnings, tall palms and the green script sign. Every tour bus slows outside it. The building is not a walk-through attraction. You get in on a reservation at the Polo Lounge, with its banana-leaf wallpaper, or the Cabana Cafe, or the Fountain Coffee Room. The counter at the Fountain Coffee Room is the cheapest way inside a hotel that otherwise prices at $$$$. Smart-casual dress is expected, and a group booking wants to go in well ahead.

The Beverly Hilton ($$$, Wilshire and Santa Monica corner) is the mid-century white curved block with scalloped balcony rails, a big circular driveway and the Aqua Star pool. It has hosted the Golden Globes since 1961, and the 83rd ceremony ran there in January 2026. The red carpet goes down in the International Ballroom. The bars and restaurants are open to the public, and the lobby is easy to walk outside event days. Visit on a normal weekday and you can stand in the ballroom corridor you have watched on television for years.

Greystone and Virginia Robinson Gardens

Greystone is grey Indiana limestone under a slate roof, with leaded windows, formal terraces, a long reflecting pool, a cypress allée and a view across the gardens from the city to the ocean. The grounds take as long as you want to give them. Interior entry is self-guided and costs $10, or $8 for residents, on timed tickets bought per person for those first-weekend openings.

Virginia Robinson Gardens ($$, Beverly Hills) was the first great estate built in Beverly Hills: a 1911 Beaux-Arts villa above terraced lawns, a long pergola, Italian stone balustrades and a dense grove of king palms on a steep canyon hillside. Visits are docent-led only, Monday to Saturday, by advance reservation on 310.550.2065. Drop-ins are never taken, and a group has to book like everyone else. You will not share the place with a coach party.

Spadena House on Walden Drive

Spadena House (Walden Drive and Carmelita) is the Witch's House, a 1921 storybook cottage with a lopsided pointed shingle roof, warped stucco, tiny crooked windows, a small moat-like pond and an overgrown cottage garden behind a low fence. It is somebody's private home. There are no tours and no entry, and the neighbourhood tolerates photography from the public pavement and nothing beyond that. Keep it quiet, and five minutes on a residential corner is enough.

City Hall and the Paley Archive

Beverly Hills City Hall and Civic Center (Beverly Hills) is the police station from Beverly Hills Cop and a 1932 Spanish Renaissance building in its own right: a tower under a gilded and tiled cupola, carved stonework and a palm-lined forecourt, linked by curving colonnaded courtyards to the 1990 Civic Center. The grounds and courtyards are always open and free. The interior is open to the public on weekdays with no ticket, and it is a working city hall, so keep your voice down indoors.

The Paley Archive at Beverly Hills Public Library (444 N Rexford Drive) is the television stop. The old Paley Center museum on Beverly Drive closed in 2020, and the 160,000-title collection reopened here, free, in March 2025. Inside is a bright library room with rows of individual screening consoles and headphones, and people watching old broadcasts on flat monitors. Individuals walk in. An organised visit needs a booking, and groups should come through in small batches.

The free trolley and the bus tours

The Beverly Hills Trolley is an open-sided green-and-cream replica car with brass rails and wooden bench seats, running past palms between the Civic Center and the Rodeo Drive corner at Dayton. It is free, 11 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with extra days in summer and winter, and seats go first-come-first-served. Treat it as a shuttle between the two ends of the walk. No guide narrates it.

The Beverly Hills Visitor Center (9400 Santa Monica Boulevard) is a small bright storefront with map racks and a concierge desk, free to walk into, open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It holds free maps, current trolley times and a straight answer on what is closed for filming that week. Give it five minutes before you start.

Starline Tours ($$) has run the celebrity-homes circuit since 1935 and is the largest operator in Los Angeles. The run takes two hours in an open-air black-and-yellow minibus, climbing narrow canyon roads past hedged gates with the Hollywood Sign on the ridge behind, and departures go through the day from 10 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Tickets are redeemed at the operator's visitor centre inside Ovation Hollywood, 6801 Hollywood Blvd, suite 203.

TMZ Celebrity Tour ($$) is the comic version, two to 2.5 hours on a branded open-top double-decker with a host on a microphone, covering Hollywood, the Sunset Strip and Beverly Hills. It departs from the Pagoda in the Chinese Theatre forecourt on Hollywood Boulevard, and private charters are sold for parties and company outings. Buy a seat for the gossip.

Tours here run seven days a week, from $17 per person, and the busiest one is flagged as likely to sell out. Book ahead rather than turning up at a departure point.

Nate 'n Al's and Il Pastaio

Nate 'n Al's (North Beverly Drive) has fed the industry since 1945 and plays the Beverly Hills deli in Curb Your Enthusiasm. The room is 1940s Jewish deli: red leatherette booths, a Formica counter, waitresses in uniform, pastrami piled on rye and matzo-ball soup. It is $$ and open daily. The room is small and it fills at breakfast, which is also when you are most likely to see a familiar face eating. Call ahead for a larger party.

Il Pastaio ($$$, 400 N Canon Drive) is a corner trattoria with a busy pavement terrace under umbrellas, and risotto finished tableside inside a hollowed parmesan wheel. The Drago family has cooked pasta here for 25 years, and the terrace is the most reliable celebrity-watching spot in the Golden Triangle. Lunch outside is the reason to come. Book, because those terrace tables are fought over; private rooms take parties of around 20, and the restaurant does full buyouts.

Best time to go

Photograph Via Rodeo before the shops open. After 10 a.m. you get shoppers in frame. Late afternoon is when City Hall's gilded tower photographs best, which puts it at the opposite end of the day from Rodeo Drive.

Greystone's first-weekend interior opening is the one fixed date in the month, and a filming closure can take it away, so check before you travel. A weekend visit is the only version of this walk that includes the trolley. Avoid the Beverly Hilton around awards nights, when the whole site locks down.

Who it suits

It suits a visitor who would rather walk a few streets than ride past them, and who can put a reservation in the diary a week or two out. The free half, Rodeo Drive, the City Hall grounds, Spadena House, the trolley and the Paley Archive, fills a morning for nothing; the booked half, Virginia Robinson Gardens, the Beverly Hills Hotel and Greystone's interior, decides which day you come.

Before you go

Greystone's interior runs on the first Saturday and Sunday of the month from January to November and can close for filming, Virginia Robinson Gardens takes phone reservations only for Monday to Saturday, and the Beverly Hills Hotel admits you on a restaurant booking. Reserve those three before anything else, and keep the trolley for a weekend.

See the Los Angeles guide and the Los Angeles hotel search.