Westwood is UCLA’s college town, located directly adjacent to the campus. It offers all the amenities you would expect to find next to a world-class university: excellent bookstores, coffee shops and affordable eateries in a pedestrian friendly warren of boutique-lined streets. Just east of Brentwood, Westwood is perhaps most well known for its movie palaces that have been host to major premiers covered by newsreels and TV over the decades. Among them, the Crest (www.westwoodcrest.com) with its distinctive art deco tower and the former Fox Theatre – now the Mann Village (961 Broxton Av; 310 248 6266). Many of Hollywood’s brightest stars are buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery (1218 Glendon Av; 310 474 1579), including Marilyn Monroe, whose grave is graced with a single red rose every day, paid for by the estate of Joe DiMaggio. A museum endowed by Occidental Petroleum mogul and philanthropist Armand Hammer (and named for him) is one of Los Angeles’ trendiest cultural attractions. The Hammer has an excellent permanent collection of impressionist art, and regularly hosts cutting edge modern and post-modern exhibitions. The museum also houses the Billy Wilder Theater, run by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

On the downside, Westwood has some of the worst traffic congestion in Los Angeles. Even with the opening of numerous municipal parking structures in recent decades, finding a parking spot in Westwood Village is notoriously difficult.

The Los Angeles California Temple (www.ldschurchtemples.com/losangeles), the second-largest temple operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), is just south of the campus area, where it looms monumentally above Santa Monica Boulevard. A visitors’ centre is open to the public. The temple grounds are home to the Los Angeles Regional Family History Center (LARFHC), which is open to the public. It is the second-largest branch in the Family History Library system of the LDS Church, and contains more than 100,000 microfiche and 30,000 books.