Free Tours Beneath LA Central Library's Zodiac Chandelier
A volunteer docent walks you into the 1926 rotunda, under a nine-foot bronze chandelier and four forty-foot murals.
🏛️ Beyond the Lobby
The tour meets in the main lobby, in front of the Library Store. A volunteer docent leads the group up the north staircase into the rotunda, the round room at the heart of Bertram Goodhue's 1926 building.
Overhead hangs Lee Lawrie's bronze Zodiac Chandelier, nine feet across, a glass globe ringed by the signs of the zodiac and framed by forty-eight bulbs. Dean Cornwell's four mural panels, each forty feet wide, wrap the upper walls in scenes from California history.
The art and architecture tours are free of charge and run Tuesday to Friday at 12:30 p.m., Saturday at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 3 p.m. Visitors join at those times, and the library asks only groups of eight or more to book at least four weeks ahead.
Outside, Lawrence Halprin's wide double stairs climb the hill from the 5th Street doors. Take them, then walk a few blocks north on Grand Avenue to Walt Disney Concert Hall, whose rooftop Blue Ribbon Garden holds the Rose for Lilly fountain.
