Looking for the best things to do in Santa Monica? This iconic beach city on LA’s Westside is all about the coast: the Santa Monica Pier and its Ferris wheel, wide beaches, the bluff-top Palisades Park, and the shops of the Third Street Promenade. Locals point to the pier, the beach and bike path, and the boutiques of Montana Avenue and Main Street.

Things to do in Santa Monica

The Pier & Beach

The Santa Monica Pier with Pacific Park’s Ferris wheel and games, wide sandy beach, and the start of the beachfront bike path (The Strand).

Palisades Park & Downtown

The clifftop Palisades Park for sunset ocean views, and the pedestrian Third Street Promenade for shopping and street performers.

Montana Avenue & Main Street

Boutiques, cafés and a laid-back local vibe — plus the historic Muscle Beach and Tongva Park.

Things to do in Santa Monica at night

The Pier lit up at night, sunset drinks with ocean views, and dining along Main Street and downtown lead the evening — with all of LA’s Westside nearby.

Free things to do in Santa Monica

• The beach and the Strand bike path
• Palisades Park at sunset
• People-watching on the Third Street Promenade

What Santa Monica locals actually recommend

The best beach spots away from the pier crowds, the Montana and Main Street gems, sunset viewpoints — that comes from people who live here. On Neighborhood Nurturers’ Santa Monica community, real neighbors answer “what should I actually do this weekend?” Join your Santa Monica neighbors free →

Where this fits in Santa Monica

The best days here mix the well-known spots with the places only locals frequent. The picks in this guide make the most sense once you know how Santa Monica is laid out. the Santa Monica Pier and Palisades Park sit at the center of where locals actually spend their time, so planning a full day out around one of them rarely goes wrong. When you want something calmer, the beach bike path pulls you away from the busiest blocks, and Tongva Park is the kind of spot regulars mention but visitors miss. Anchor your plan to one of those and the rest of the day in Santa Monica tends to fall into place.

More Santa Monica guides

Santa Monica rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Free things to do in Santa Monica, Best restaurants in Santa Monica, undefined Santa Monica — enough to plan a whole day or two.

Ask a Santa Monica neighbor

The best tips never make the guidebooks — they come from neighbors who know which spot is worth it this week. That is what the Santa Monica community on Neighborhood Nurturers is for. Ask Santa Monica locals what they would do, or join free and get honest answers from people who actually know Santa Monica.

First, solve the parking

It sounds unromantic to open with this, but in Santa Monica it is the single thing that decides whether a day goes well — and it is the most-searched practical question about the city by a wide margin.

Use a beach lot rather than the Pier deck. Park in a numbered city structure for downtown. Arrive before 10am in summer. Or skip it entirely: Metro rail reaches downtown Santa Monica and the Big Blue Bus covers the city densely. Full detail in the parking guide.

Get that right and everything below is easy.

1. The Pier — and the bit everyone walks past

The Santa Monica Pier opened on 9 September 1909, and walking onto it is free. Pacific Park, which arrived in 1996, is LA’s only admission-free amusement park — you pay per ride, not to enter.

The Pacific Wheel is the world’s first and only solar-powered Ferris wheel, carrying more than 174,000 LED lights.

But the thing to actually do is the Looff Hippodrome carousel at the south end — added by Charles Looff in 1916, housing 44 hand-carved horses, and a U.S. National Historic Landmark since 1975. Almost every visitor walks past it. See the Pier guide.

2. The Beach House almost nobody finds

The Annenberg Community Beach House at 415 Pacific Coast Highway sits on the site of a 110-room mansion built for Marion Davies by William Randolph Hearst.

It opened to the public on 25 April 2009, has no membership requirement, and only the pool — the estate’s original tile-trimmed, marble-decked pool — charges admission. Everything else is free, and it has its own car park.

It is quieter, more interesting and easier to reach than the Pier end of the beach, and most visitors never go. See the Beach House guide.

3. The beach itself, which is the actual point

Santa Monica has miles of sand, a bike path running the length of it, volleyball courts, and the original Muscle Beach just south of the Pier, where the outdoor gymnastics equipment still stands.

Santa Monica beach versus Venice beach is a question people genuinely search. The honest answer: Santa Monica is wider, cleaner, more family-oriented and better organised; Venice is stranger, scruffier and more interesting to look at. They adjoin, the bike path connects them, and the correct answer is to see both in one afternoon.

4. Downtown and the Promenade

Third Street Promenade is the pedestrianised shopping street and the anchor of downtown — busy, commercial, and full of street performers.

It has had a hard decade, as most American shopping streets have, and how you find it will depend heavily on the day. It is worth walking; it is not worth planning a trip around.

The numbered city parking structures around it are, incidentally, the cheapest way to park for the whole downtown area.

5. The parks and the stairs

Palisades Park — the long clifftop strip above the beach, with the best free view in the city.

Tongva Park — a modern park near the Civic Center with a splash pad and playground, and a genuinely good piece of landscape design.

The Santa Monica stairs — a public staircase that has become one of the best-known outdoor workouts in Los Angeles. Free, brutal, and a very local thing to do.

See the parks guide.

A day in Santa Monica

Morning: the Annenberg Beach House — quiet, historic, with parking.

Midday: cycle or walk south along the beach path.

Afternoon: the Pier, the carousel, and Muscle Beach.

Sunset: Palisades Park on the cliff, or the beach below the Pier as the wheel lights up.

Evening: inland to Main Street or Montana Avenue, away from pier prices. See the restaurants guide.

One parking payment, one flat city, no queues you did not choose.

The weather, which is the whole reason

Worth stating, because it is the underrated fact about Santa Monica and it shapes everything else.

The coast here is markedly cooler than inland Los Angeles — often by ten degrees or more on the same afternoon — because of the ocean and the marine layer. In summer that makes Santa Monica the comfortable part of the metro; in winter it makes it mild and pleasant when the valleys are cold.

The trade is the marine layer itself. Mornings on this coast are frequently grey and stay that way until midday, particularly in May and June — the local shorthand is “May Gray” and “June Gloom”, and visitors who booked for sunshine are regularly surprised.

September and October are the reliably warm, clear months here, as they are along most of the Southern California coast. If you can choose when to come, choose then.

Being straight about Santa Monica

It is a small, expensive, extremely well-run coastal city of about eight and a half square miles, wedged into the western edge of Los Angeles — and it is one of the most visited places in California.

That means crowds, prices and a parking problem the city has spent decades engineering around. It also means a beach, a bike path, a historic pier, a genuinely good transit system and a public beach club built on a Hearst estate, all within walking distance of each other.

Approach it as a compact coastal city rather than as a Los Angeles neighborhood and it works. Approach it expecting somewhere quiet or cheap and it will not.

Frequently asked questions

What are the top things to do in Santa Monica?

Visit the Santa Monica Pier and Pacific Park’s Ferris wheel, spend a day at the beach, walk or bike The Strand, catch sunset from Palisades Park, and shop the Third Street Promenade, Montana Avenue and Main Street.

What is Santa Monica known for?

Its iconic pier and Ferris wheel, wide beaches, the bluff-top Palisades Park, and the walkable Third Street Promenade — a quintessential LA beach experience.

What are free things to do in Santa Monica?

The beach and the Strand bike path, Palisades Park at sunset, and the Third Street Promenade are all free.

Is Santa Monica worth visiting in LA?

Yes — its pier, beaches and walkable downtown make it one of the most popular and accessible beach destinations in the LA area.