Jean

After a 9-year, $275-million rebuilding, the Getty Villa has reopened. The museum is a recreation of a 1st C. Roman country villa, housing Green, Roman and Etruscan antiquities.

Getty Villa
17985 Pacific Coast Hwy.
Pacific Palisades, CA

10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays through Mondays, except major holidays.

Admission free but reservations required (no walk-ins). Parking is $7 per car, cash only.

For tickets, call (310)440-7300 or go to www.getty.edu. Groups of 9 or more should call rather than use website. No openings until at least August 2006.

I can hardly wait to go. The Villa in its previous incarnation was beautiful, peaceful, and a little bit of Italy without the plane ride.

Dayle

Jean,

Glad to hear this! I visited the Getty Villa many years ago when it was new! What a fabulous museum, but the building alone is worth the visit. The only other place I've seen so many colors of marble is St. Peter's in Rome.

I would recommend this museum as highly as the new Getty museum. If you are visiting LA - go!

And, have a great fresh fish lunch at Gladstone's on the beach below!

earl30

interesting, but if you go to the website, there are no tickets at all available, ever. you can't book past july and everything until then is sold out.

Jean

The L.A. Times, in an article about opening day, interviewed a couple of people who had been on a waiting list and ended up getting tickets. They were seriously impressed that the Getty people had not only contacted them but sent the tickets the day prior by an overnight delivery service to their hotel. An amazing example of human intervention in an otherwise automated/computerized process.

Because of this, I'd definitely not rely entirely on the website and pick up that relatively ancient communications device: the telephone!

I forgot to mention in my first post that there is a self-service cafe on the Museum grounds.

emd

Getty had a full page ad in the LA TImes yesterday saying how happy they are w/the interest in the Villa reopening, and how sorry they are that the tickets are already gone through July. They said to keep checking because more tickets might become available online for times btwn. not and end of July (I have no idea how that can happen but that is what the ad said) but that people should NOT drive out there thiking they might be able to get in. Apparently the residents in Malibu/PP are very upset at the thought that people might just drive out there thinking they can get it abd thereby create even more traffic problems than there already will be, so this ad was partly in response to that concern.