Getty Villa, Art museum in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, United States.
The Getty Villa is an art museum in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, United States, dedicated to ancient Mediterranean objects housed in a neo-pompeian style building. The museum sits in the hills near the Pacific coast and features courtyards, colonnades, and open-air spaces that replicate Roman architecture.
J. Paul Getty opened the museum in 1974 as a recreation of the Villa dei Papiri, which was buried during a volcanic eruption in the year 79. The collection began in the 1950s and grew through purchases of ancient artworks from private and public sources.
The collection displays artifacts from ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria within rooms that recreate how such objects would have been shown in a Roman home. Visitors walk through galleries arranged by theme, encountering sculptures, vases, jewelry, and everyday objects that illustrate life in the Mediterranean thousands of years ago.
Entry is free, but visitors must make a timed reservation in advance and pay $20 for parking. The site opens in the morning and closes in early evening, with longer hours during summer months.
Four gardens with more than 300 Mediterranean plant varieties surround the building and contain water basins, fountains, and pergolas modeled on Roman examples. The gardens follow ancient descriptions and archaeological findings from buried cities near the Bay of Naples.
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