Marilyn Monroe's Los Angeles at 100: A Guide to Her Hotels, Landmarks, and Favorite Restaurants

• Hotel: The Beverly Hills Hotel. Bungalows 1 and 7, Table 6 at the Polo Lounge, and a centennial menu worth ordering from. There is no more Marilyn address in Los Angeles.

• Experience: Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The definitive exhibition of her life and career, open through February 2027.

• Restaurant: Musso & Frank Grill. The oldest restaurant in Hollywood, open since 1919, and Monroe's most storied dining room. Order the flannel cakes.

Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles. She never really left. The city that transformed a foster-care kid from Hawthorne into the most photographed woman of the twentieth century still holds her story in its buildings, its booths, and its bungalows.

This June, as the world marks the 100th anniversary of her birth, Los Angeles is the most resonant place on earth to feel the full weight of that story. The hotels where she retreated are still open. The restaurants where she slipped in through side doors still serve dinner. Her handprints are still pressed into the concrete on Hollywood Boulevard. And the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is presenting the definitive exhibition of her life and career through February 2027.

Here is where to go.

No property is more associated with Marilyn Monroe than The Beverly Hills Hotel. She lived on and off in Bungalows 1 and 7 across the span of her career, treating the pink-stucco compound on Sunset as something between a sanctuary and a second home. Her regular table at the Polo Lounge was Table 6. Through the month of June, the hotel is marking the centennial with two additions to the menu: the "Soufflés are a Girl's Best Friend," a hot fudge sundae-inspired soufflé, and the "Marilyn Mimosa," made with her favorite Piper-Heidsieck Champagne, available at the Polo Lounge, The Cabana Cafe, and through in-room dining.

Hotel Bel-Air occupies a canyon above Beverly Hills where the gardens are dense, swans drift across a small lake, and the city outside feels very far away. Monroe returned to Hotel Bel-Air throughout the defining decade of her career, from her marriage to Joe DiMaggio through the filming of Some Like It Hot. It was also the site of Bert Stern's legendary 1962 portrait session for Vogue, known as 'The Last Sitting,' completed just six weeks before her death. Through June, the hotel is serving the "Some Like It Sweet" Ice Cream Sundae, a nostalgia-driven tribute to her 1950s soda shop favorites.

The Hollywood Roosevelt is where the Monroe story begins. She shot her first commercial here, and the Marilyn Suite, overlooking the Tropicana Pool, remains one of the most evocative rooms in Los Angeles for anyone tracing her early career. On June 1, the Roosevelt's Cinegrill Theater hosts a centennial screening of Some Like It Hot, the perfect way to spend her birthday.

The restaurants Marilyn Monroe returned to across the years of her career in Los Angeles were not always the obvious choices for a woman of her fame. She gravitated toward places with history, regulars, and no interest in making a fuss over anyone.

Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard opened in 1919 and has been serving flannel cakes and martinis to the film industry ever since. Monroe was a regular. So was nearly everyone else who mattered in Hollywood, which is precisely what makes the place worth visiting.

Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard is one of the great survivors of Old Hollywood dining, a trolley car converted into a restaurant in the 1920s that became a studio canteen and a haunt for the actors who worked in them. Monroe was a regular, drawn to the red vinyl booths and the side entrance on Formosa Avenue that let her come and go avoiding the paparazzi.

Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood is the counterpoint to Formosa's polish. Open since 1920 on Santa Monica Boulevard, it was the kind of place that drew everyone from studio workers to screen legends, and Monroe was among them, ordering chili at the counter like everyone else.

Canter's Deli on Fairfax Avenue was where Monroe and Arthur Miller could blend in. The deli has been open since 1931, runs twenty-four hours a day, and the Art Deco ceiling in the dining room looks exactly as it did when they were regulars.

The landmarks most closely associated with Monroe's public life are spread across Hollywood and Beverly Hills but are connected closely enough that covering them in a single day is certainly possible. The most efficient way to cover these landmarks in a single day is on a Tour of LA which connects Hollywood Boulevard, Beverly Hills, and the coastline.

TCL Chinese Theatre is where Monroe and Jane Russell pressed their hands and feet into wet cement on June 26, 1953, to mark the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her prints are in the Forecourt of the Stars, surrounded by those of the actors and directors who followed, and they draw more visitors than almost any other individual square of concrete in the complex.

Monroe's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame sits at Hollywood and Highland, a short walk from the Chinese Theatre and easily covered in the same visit.

The Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, one of the most beautiful movie palaces still operating in Los Angeles, was the setting for Monroe's appearance at the 1951 Academy Awards, when the Pantages was the regular home of the ceremony.

The Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, built in 1930 as the Fox Wilshire, was the venue for the premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953, one of the highest-profile evenings of her peak stardom. It operates today as a live music and performance venue.

The most significant event of the centennial year in Los Angeles is Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Wilshire Boulevard. The exhibition opens May 31 and runs through February 2027, drawing on the museum's archive and loan collections to present Monroe's career and cultural legacy.

The Hollywood Museum in the Max Factor Building on Highland Avenue holds the largest collection of Monroe memorabilia in the world, from costumes and photographs to personal effects. For anyone who wants more than the Academy Museum's curated narrative, this is where to go.

On May 29, the Los Angeles Public Library hosts a panel discussion with the hosts of the All Things Marilyn podcast, built around the newly released Marilyn: The Lost Photographs, The Last Interview, a book that brings together images and her own words in a way that reframes the standard biographical narrative.

Throughout June, TCM is running Monroe as its Star of the Month, with screenings of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Some Like It Hot, and The Misfits across the first three Monday evenings of the month. On June 4, Julien's Auctions is holding a "100 Years of Marilyn" sale at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, featuring more than 100 items from Monroe's life and career including clothing, film scripts, photographs, and handwritten notes. It is open to bidders in person and online.

Monroe's Brentwood home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive was the only property she ever owned, purchased in 1962 on the advice of her psychiatrist, who felt she needed roots. She died there later that same year at thirty-six. The Los Angeles City Council has designated it a Historic-Cultural Monument, protecting it from demolition. The house is not open to the public but can be seen from the street, and for anyone tracing Marilyn Monroe's Los Angeles from beginning to end, it is a necessary stop.

Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park sits behind a row of Wilshire Boulevard office towers, tucked off Glendon Avenue and easy to miss if you do not know to look for it. Among those buried here are Dean Martin, Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Truman Capote, and Farrah Fawcett. Marilyn Monroe is in Crypt 24 in the Corridor of Memories, a marble-lined outdoor passage that is open to visitors during cemetery hours. People have been leaving flowers and pressing lipstick kisses onto the marble since she was buried in August 1962.

Los Angeles does not require much convincing as a destination, but the centennial gives it a specific kind of focus this June. Monroe's story here is not confined to a single neighborhood or a single era. It runs across decades and zip codes, from a Hollywood orphanage to the pink bungalows of Beverly Hills, ending in a quiet marble corridor in Westwood. The city that made her is still very much here, and there has never been a better time to see it through her eyes.