Rodeo Drive

Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is one of the world's wealthiest residential areas, revealed and glorified by immaculate shops (such as those on Rodeo Drive, squeaky-clean streets and the odd ostentatious display - notably the mock-European shopping alley Rodeo Two, perhaps LA's height of pretension. Still, there are a number of worthwhile and unassuming spots for visitors interested in things other than commodities.

The Museum of Television and Radio (Wed-Sun noon-5pm; $6) is a welcome addition, chronicling fifty years of the boob tube, while the Beverly Hills Trolley (daily noon-4pm during summer, otherwise Sat; $5) offers tourists a 40-minute glimpse of the city's highlights, departing hourly from the corner of Dayton Way and Rodeo Drive. For a view of the city's finest art and architecture, a 50-minute trolley tour takes you to a number of less familiar, though still compelling sights (11am Sat only; $5).

Palatial estates lie hidden behind landscaped security gates in the verdant canyons and foothills above Sunset Boulevard. Benedict Canyon Drive climbs past a good number. Some, like the lavish PickFair mansion, 1143 Summit Drive, are long gone, while others survive, including Harold Lloyd's Green Acres (1740 Green Acres Drive), with its secret passageways and large private screening room, though much of its spacious grounds, with a waterfall and nine-hole golf course, has been broken up into smaller lots.

Just outside Beverly Hills, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Beit HaShoa Museum of Tolerance, 9786 W Pico Blvd, is the most technologically advanced institution of its kind, using videotaped interviews to provide LA's frankest examination of the 1992 riots, looking at international hate and intolerance in general, and showing the rise of Nazism with a harrowing look at a replica gas chamber.



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