Malibu’s Getty Villa drops you in ancient Rome, steps from the Pacific Coast Highway: As the story develops

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It’s got 44,000 ancient treasures inside

A Roman country house sits on a hillside where Pacific Palisades meets Malibu, right above Pacific Coast Highway. You walk through columns and gardens with the Pacific stretching out below you, and for a second, you forget you’re in Los Angeles. The Getty Villa holds thousands of years of Greek and Roman art, the grounds look like something out of the Italian coast, and admission costs nothing. The catch is there’s almost too much to take in at once. Shutterstock

An oil tycoon built it from a buried Roman home

J. Paul Getty made his fortune in oil and spent years collecting ancient art. When the collection outgrew his space, he built a full museum modeled on the Villa dei Papiri, a grand Roman house that Mount Vesuvius buried in AD 79. The doors opened to the public in 1974. Getty died two years later and never walked through the finished building. The Villa closed for renovations and came back in 2006 with updated galleries and a fresh layout. Shutterstock

The Lansdowne Herakles has its own round room

One of Getty’s most prized pieces sits in a special circular gallery called the Temple of Herakles. The marble statue dates to about AD 125 and shows the hero young, nude, gripping a club with a lion skin draped over his arm. Workers dug it up in 1790 near the Roman emperor Hadrian’s country estate at Tivoli. You round the corner and find it standing alone in the room, lit from above, with nothing else competing for your attention. Wikimedia Commons/J. Paul Getty Museum

A Greek bronze pulled from the sea by fishermen

In 1964, fishermen dragging nets through the Adriatic Sea hauled up something tangled in the lines. It turned out to be a life-size bronze statue of a young athlete reaching up to crown himself with a wreath. The piece dates somewhere between 300 and 100 BC, and very few large Greek bronzes have survived to today. The Villa keeps it in its own climate-controlled gallery, so you can walk right up and study the details. Shutterstock

Roughly 1,200 pieces on display at any time

The Getty Villa holds about 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan objects, and roughly 1,200 of them sit on view at any given time. The oldest items go back thousands of years. You move through galleries organized by time and culture, tracing how art changed from early Greece through the height of Rome.

Because pieces rotate in and out, you can come back six months later and find whole cases full of things you didn’t see the first time. Shutterstock

The galleries feel like rooms in an ancient house

Two floors of art wrap around open garden courtyards, and the whole layout follows the shape of a Roman home. You’ll find marble gods in one room, painted vases in the next, and delicate glass and gold around the corner. The entryway atrium has a sunken pool designed to catch rainwater, just like the real thing. Rooms are well marked, so you can skip ahead to what grabs you or take it all in order. Shutterstock

A 220-foot reflecting pool runs the length of the garden

The Outer Peristyle is the Villa’s largest garden and its centerpiece. A reflecting pool stretches 220 feet down the middle, nearly the length of a football field, lined with columns, trimmed hedges, and bronze statues. You can walk the full length at whatever pace you want, and most people slow down without thinking about it. The water mirrors the sky, the columns, and whatever light the afternoon gives you. It’s the kind of place where five minutes turns into thirty. Shutterstock

Four gardens grow citrus, grapes, and Roman herbs

The Inner Peristyle holds a narrow pool ringed by statues of women, quieter and more closed-in than the big garden outside. Over in the East Garden, two fountains run side by side, and one of them sits inside a colorful mosaic. The Herb Garden grows citrus trees, grapevines, and plants the Romans used for food and medicine. A shaded grape-vine trellis gives you a cool spot to walk through. The outer grounds lost some trees in the 2025 Palisades Fire, but the gardens remain green and full. Wikimedia Commons/Scotwriter21

Watch a Greek tragedy under the open sky

A curved stone theater with stepped seating faces a stage, built to look like the open-air theaters of the ancient world. Each fall, the Villa puts on a reimagined classical play inspired by the ancient Mediterranean, either a tragedy or a comedy. Ocean breezes come through during the performance, and the whole setup feels right for the material. Even outside of show season, the entrance area was designed to feel like you’re stepping into an old Roman town. Wikimedia Commons/Gerry & Bonni

Pack a lunch and eat it in the gardens

You can bring your own food and nonalcoholic drinks onto the grounds, and the gardens give you plenty of places to spread out. Shaded benches line the walkways if you just want to sit. A Mediterranean cafe and a coffee kiosk are on site if you’d rather not pack anything.

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A lot of people end up spending more time outside than in the galleries, which says something about what the grounds do to your sense of time. Shutterstock

Free tours and family-friendly ways to explore

The Villa runs free guided tours that cover the architecture, the gardens, and the art. Inside, a short introductory video sets the scene before you start walking the galleries. If you bring kids, the Villa gives family tips to help them explore the ancient world at their own speed. The gardens and fountains work for all ages, and you can arrange group visits for larger parties ahead of time. Shutterstock

Sunset turns the columns gold above the coast

The grounds sit high enough above the Malibu coast to give you wide views of the Pacific from the outer walkways. You can see the ocean and the hillsides in every direction. Late in the day, the sunset light hits the columns and pools and turns everything warm. The whole mix of gardens, marble, and salt air puts you somewhere that doesn’t feel like the city at all. Give yourself at least half a day, because you won’t want to rush it. Wikimedia Commons/Gary Todd

Visit the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Calif. If you want to see all of this for yourself, the Getty Villa sits at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Admission is free, but you need a timed-entry reservation before you show up. The Villa is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Tuesday, and parking comes with a fee. You can book your reservation through the official website ahead of your visit, and weekday mornings tend to be the least crowded. This article was created with AI assistance and human editing. Read more from this brand:

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