
Dolby Theatre sits within the Hollywood & Highland complex, designed as a permanent home for the Academy Awards ceremony. Its auditorium combines theatrical staging with broadcast technology, placing the mechanics of a global film event inside a working Hollywood venue.
Guide preview
The red-carpet setting outside gives little hint of the broadcast machinery inside. Dolby Theatre was designed with the Academy Awards telecast in mind and has hosted the ceremony since 2001. That purpose shaped its architecture: the auditorium must serve both a live audience and millions watching through television.
Continue exploring
Discover the full story
Keep reading with a travel pass and explore every full guide and tour.
UpgradeQuick facts
- Dolby Theatre was designed for the Academy Awards broadcast.
- It has hosted the Academy Awards ceremony since 2001.
- The first Academy Awards were held in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
More places in Los Angeles

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
The Academy Museum occupies the restored May Company building and a newer spherical addition on Wilshire Boulevard. Its architecture links Los Angeles’s commercial past with the art and technology of filmmaking, giving the museum a campus shaped by both preservation and invention.

Angels Flight Railway
Two compact cars climb a steep slope in a short ride that links downtown’s modern grid to the former Bunker Hill neighborhood. Angels Flight is a surviving funicular, and its interrupted history reflects the dramatic rebuilding of central Los Angeles.

Beverly Hills Sign
The Beverly Hills sign and lily pond sit within Beverly Gardens Park, a landscaped ribbon that gives the city a recognizable public image. The sign works as a civic marker, while the water and planting soften the surrounding urban streets.

Bradbury Building
The Bradbury Building’s restrained street façade opens into a dramatic five-storey atrium of brick, iron, marble and daylight. Built in 1893, the office building makes its interior circulation the main event, drawing visitors’ eyes up through stairways and open balconies.

California Science Center
California Science Center presents science through hands-on galleries and major artifacts in Exposition Park. The Space Shuttle Endeavour anchors its aerospace story, connecting visitors to the engineering, teamwork and research behind human spaceflight.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
The cathedral’s angular concrete walls and amber-toned alabaster panels create an interior shaped by filtered light rather than conventional stained-glass storytelling. Rafael Moneo’s design places a contemporary Catholic landmark beside the civic buildings of downtown Los Angeles.