Getty Center

The Getty Center is a hilltop museum and research campus in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, designed by the architect Richard Meier for the J. Paul Getty Trust and opened on December 16, 1997, at a cost of about 1.3 billion dollars. The complex sits atop a ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains and is reached from its parking garage by a cable-pulled tram, since the hilltop site was left otherwise inaccessible by car; the buildings are clad in roughly 1.2 million square feet of cleft travertine stone, paired with white enameled metal panels in Meier's characteristic geometric style. The museum houses the Getty's collection of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, decorative arts and photographs from before the twentieth century, and the campus draws about 1.8 million visitors a year while also serving as the headquarters of the broader Getty Trust and its research and conservation programs.