The Getty Villa

The Getty Villa is a recreation of a Roman luxury villa — the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD — built on the Malibu coastline by J. Paul Getty to house his collection of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. The building, completed in 1974 and renovated in 2006, is the most ambitious architectural recreation of a Roman villa in the modern world, and the combination of ancient art in a Roman setting overlooking the Pacific creates an experience that is part museum, part archaeological fantasy.

The collection includes bronze sculptures, marble statuary, painted vases, and the gold jewelry and precious objects that Getty acquired with the resources of one of the richest men in the world. The 'Victorious Youth' (a rare Greek bronze from the 4th or 3rd century BC, subject to ongoing Italian repatriation claims) and the 'Getty Kouros' (a marble statue whose authenticity has been debated for decades — it may be a masterpiece or a forgery, and the museum displays it with the ambiguity unresolved) are the collection's most discussed works.

The villa's gardens — recreated based on archaeological evidence from Herculaneum and Pompeii, with herb gardens, reflecting pools, and the Mediterranean plants that Romans cultivated 2,000 years ago — are as much a part of the experience as the galleries. Admission is free (advance reservation required), and the drive along Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica to the villa provides the coastal scenery that makes getting anywhere in LA feel like it should be a movie scene.