Hollywood Walk of Fame

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is the most famous sidewalk in the world — 2,700+ five-pointed terrazzo-and-brass stars embedded in the pavement along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street, each bearing the name of a celebrity from the entertainment industry. The Walk was created in 1958 and has been adding approximately 30 stars per year since, creating a continuously evolving monument to the fame machine that defines Hollywood's cultural output.

The stars are categorised by industry — motion pictures, television, audio recording, radio, and live theatre — and the mix of names ranges from genuine cultural icons (Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, The Beatles) to celebrities that time has forgotten, which creates a walk that is simultaneously a history of American entertainment and a meditation on the transience of fame. The most-visited star is Michael Jackson's (at 6927 Hollywood Blvd), and the newest stars are installed in ceremonies that occasionally still generate the kind of crowd and media attention that the Walk was designed to attract.

Hollywood Boulevard itself is more gritty than glamorous — the stretch around the Walk of Fame is a commercial strip of souvenir shops, wax museums, celebrity impersonators, and the general hustle of a tourist attraction that trades on a reputation established a century ago. The TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's), with its famous cement handprints and footprints of movie stars in the forecourt, is the Walk's anchor attraction and the most tangible connection to Hollywood's Golden Age.