Hotels in Santa Monica, California

A little about Santa Monica...

Santa Monica is a coastal city in western Los Angeles County, California, USA. It borders Santa Monica Bay (part of the Pacific Ocean) on the west, Pacific Palisades and Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles and Mar Vista on the east, and Venice on the south. Except for the Pacific Ocean to its west, it is a municipality completely surrounded by the City of Los Angeles. As of the 2005 census, the city had a population of 96,500, but an early 2006 estimate has the population at 103,255. Santa Monica is named for Saint Monica of Hippo because the area on which the city is now located was first visited by Spaniards on her feast day. In the skateboard and surfing communities Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood and adjacent parts of Venice are sometimes called Dogtown. Santa Monica is sometimes referred to with the colloquial abbreviation "SaMo," a precursor to similar terms such as NoHo and WeHo.

Because of its agreeable weather, Santa Monica had become a famed resort town by the early 20th century. The city has experienced a boom since the late 1980s through the revitalization of its downtown core, significant job growth, and increased tourism.

Santa Monica College (SMC, informally known as Pico Tech, Harvard-by-the-Sea or UC Santa Monica), a junior college founded in 1929 many of whose graduates transfer to the University of California system, occupies 35 acres (14 ha) and enrolls 30,000 students annually. The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, associated with the RAND Corporation, is the U.S.'s largest producers of public policy PhDs. The University of Santa Monica is a small institution granting MA degrees in Clinical and Spiritual Psychology.

Universities and colleges within a 15-mile radius from Santa Monica include Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles Valley College, Loyola Marymount University, Pepperdine University, West Los Angeles College, UCLA and West Valley Occupational Center.

The Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (carousel) is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, which was built in 1909. The La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US, and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts. The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is still a leading acoustic performance space, as well as retail outlet. Bergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound that includes the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The city is also home to the Santa Monica Heritage Museum.

Santa Monica is also the home for the Third Street Promenade, a major outdoor pedestrian oriented shopping district that stretches for three blocks between Wilshire Blvd. and Broadway Blvd.

The oldest theater in the city is the 1912 Majestic, also known as the Mayfair Theatre, closed since the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Aero Theater (now operated by the American Cinematheque) and Criterion Theater were built in the 1930s and still show movies. The Santa Monica Promenade alone supports more than a dozen movie screens.