The American motion picture industry, which got off the ground in the then Methodist temperance colony of Holly­wood in the 1910s, gave the neighbourhood an aura of glamor that soon spread far and wide. Truth be told, though, the film companies and the film stars both left Hollywood as soon as they were successful (you’ll find the for­mer in Burbank and the latter in Bever­ly Hills or Malibu) and the district has since deteriorated into a handful of movie-era landmarks sandwiched between souvenir shops and surround­ed by depressed – and dangerous after dark – residential streets.

Nonetheless, you haven’t been to LA unless you’ve spent an hour strolling Hollywood Boulevard and combined this with a car tour of the nearby sights. On Hollywood Boulevard, the Walk of Fame remembers two thou­sand showbiz stars prepared to pay $3,500 for the privilege of adding a paving slab bearing their name to the sidewalk and deserves no more than passing glances on the way to Mann’s Chinese Theatre, no. 6925. Opened by impresario Sid Grauman in 1927, the theatre’s mock-Oriental form is barely noticed by the two million visi­tors who descend each year on the world’s most popular set of foot and hand (and hoof, in the case of Gene Autry’s horse) prints embedded in the theatre’s forecourt, bequeathed by screen stars.

Drive north along Highland Avenue and you soon reach the Hollywood Bowl, a renowned open-air auditorium and the summer home of the LA Phil­harmonic Orchestra. The Philharmon­ic’s evening concert series here has entertained Angelenos since the 1920s, a fact borne out by the photos and exhibits stored inside the Holly­wood Bowl Museum, close to the entrance, where you’ll also find evidence of the Beatles’ legendary appearance at the bowl in 1964.

Directly across Highland Avenue, the Hollywood Studio Museum (http://thehollywoodmuseum.com) is an under-valued collection of absorbing bits and bobs culled from American movie-making’s earliest days and is housed in the barn in which Cecil B. DeMille made an inauspicious start to his directing career, sharing the building with a horse.

Round off your tour of Hollywood at the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard, a final resting place for many famous or indeed legendary names: among them Jayne Mansfield, Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks, and, in the Cathedral Mausoleum, Rudolph Valentino.

Detour – Universal Studios

The thrill-a-minute rides around familiar film sets offered by, Universal Studios are one of the major tourist attractions of LA. The entrance to Universal Studios, however, lies not in Hollywood but at Universal City by the junction of the Hollywood Freeway and Lankershim Boulevard, near Burbank (www.universalstudioshollywood.com). You can get to Universal City using the Metro Rail (https://www.metro.net/riding/maps/).