LOS ANGELES » Had I been driving I would not have stopped here. But I was lured from the sidewalk by an open gate and the mysterious buildings beyond. There was a Moorish structure with a minaret, another was Italian with a loggia, a third had a fleur-de-lis on a chimney. It was as if a snow globe village had been dropped onto Sunset Boulevard. At the back of the hushed lot, a stone statue, naked to her hips, stood sentry.

I would later learn that this is where a Jazz Age gangster named Charlie Crawford was murdered. In 1936 these buildings, commissioned by his widow, became Crossroads of the World, the first pedestrian outdoor shopping mall in Los Angeles. In the 1940s it was recast as an office complex, attracting such tenants as Alfred Hitchcock. Today, the site calls to mind the scene in "Big" where Tom Hanks returns to an abandoned fairground in search of a wish-making machine. There’s magic in the air, even after the carnival has come and gone.

Visit Los Angeles as a solo traveler and you’ll find few better ways to unmask the city’s hidden-in-plain-sight history, meet other people and imbibe responsibly than to be car-free. (And consider the money you’ll save on gas and valets.)

This is not to scorn the car, which offers its own pleasures. It’s a symbol of freedom and, at its most inspired, art.

But driving can complicate a solo trip, and those who would rather not brave Los Angeles traffic should know that they need not see the city from behind a wheel to relish it. Some of its most beloved citizens, including author Ray Bradbury, never drove. And while walking is common downtown and in Venice Beach and Santa Monica, in cooler months one can just as easily traverse Los Angeles between West Hollywood, Los Feliz, Miracle Mile and Larchmont Village by putting one foot in front of the other (with help now and then from mass transit and Uber).

In fact, local tourism officials are encouraging people to do just that.

Last year the City of West Hollywood’s marketing arm posted "Walkable WeHo" tours on its website after being named the most walkable city in California by Walk Score, a company that ranks cities and neighborhoods by their pedestrian friendliness. On West Third Street, home to design boutiques like OK and Plastica, banners promote the area as "a walkable shopping & dining district." And in March, the California Department of Transportation reported "a dramatic increase in walking trips" among residents, saying they nearly doubled to 16.6 percent of trips by 2012, up from 8.4 percent of trips in 2000.

Granted, strolling Los Angeles can be anything but picturesque. There are wide, noisy boulevards with scant shade. If you’re a woman, men in cars may greet you with "Yowza!" as they whiz by. Sometimes, to borrow a phrase from Shel Silverstein, the sidewalk ends.

But just when you think walking these interminable avenues is for East Coast chumps, something makes you smile. Take the white Tudor-style building that caught my eye on an otherwise humdrum stretch of North La Brea Avenue. A second glance revealed a trompe-l’oeil image of a grinning Charlie Chaplin leaning on a cane. From there my gaze traveled up the building to a 12-foot-tall Kermit the Frog tipping a bowler hat atop what turned out to be the Jim Henson Co., formerly Charlie Chaplin Studios (hence Kermit’s "little tramp" get-up).

Walk east on Franklin Avenue and you’ll be rewarded with postcard views of the Hollywood sign over your left shoulder, or the French-Normandy-style 1920s hotel Chateau Elysee (now the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International) rising above the trees near Tamarind Avenue. Walk long enough and you realize that here in this megalopolis of cars are quiet wonders, like the surprisingly ubiquitous sight of hummingbirds hovering around storefronts and terraces.

When you’re car-free and solo, one of the easiest places to nest is West Hollywood. There’s plenty of shopping, dining and night life, and the central location makes it a great base for jaunts to other neighborhoods. Hotels dot the Sunset Strip (once the stamping grounds of numerous larger-than-life personalities including members of the Doors and Led Zeppelin) and a walk from here to the La Brea Tar Pits is a mere 3 miles.

For a tranquil morning stroll past bungalows and Mediterranean-style homes with cactuses in the yard, turn off Sunset onto Sweetzer Avenue. Make your way to the Farmers Market on West Third Street, a casual, affordable maze in which solo travelers will be at ease sampling an array of cuisines, and dining al fresco. A chocolate caramel nut doughnut from Bob’s Coffee & Doughnuts goes with everything. (There for lunch? Try Loteria Grill.)

From there head south to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hancock Park and the La Brea Tar Pits, a grassy landscape punctured by the occasional black gooey pool, where paleontologists have unearthed fossils of everything from snails to a mastodon.

Yes, it’s a tourist destination, but for those who have never been, it’s an offbeat adventure.

If you’d rather gawk at shop windows than tar pits, stay in West Hollywood, where you can walk North Robertson Boulevard past the little red awnings of Christian Louboutin; Sur, the restaurant and bar staffed by badly behaved reality TV stars; and the original Kitson boutique where boldface names stock up on essentials like rhinestone-encased pepper spray.

The most satisfying strolls, however, are to be had on the side streets.

Dorrington Avenue between North Robertson Boulevard and North San Vicente Boulevard is too lovely to resist: hydrangea, azaleas, bird of paradise, cottages in Mediterranean and Spanish bungalow styles — and not a car in sight. You could spend hours weaving up and down the surrounding tree-lined streets, where front lawns are small but lovingly manicured.

Among the succulents and roses, security and video surveillance signs bloom on stakes. As an Uber driver jokingly put it to me: "If you look at a tree too hard, they’re going to prosecute you."

When the sun disappears, there are plenty of clubs, lounges and theaters in which to while away the night. Or maybe you just want to thumb through CDs and LPs at Amoeba Music, a warehouse of new, used and rare albums — hip-hop, electronica, underground rock — on Sunset Boulevard. Jazz and classical music lovers will want to retreat to the back room, where they will also find $1 records.

It’s worth spending time downtown in the surrounding streets, eating in the Grand Central Market, checking out the Victorian court of the 1893 Bradbury Building, Little Tokyo, and the opulent Spanish Baroque-style Rendezvous Court inside the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. (If I had more time, I would have explored downtown landmarks on one of the Los Angeles Conservancy walking tours.)

Yet as rich as this area is, any car-free tour of Los Angeles must, at some point, lead to the beach.

When the sun shines on the soft, fine sand of Santa Monica, everything shimmers. In the white-blue light of morning, I passed sea gulls and surfers with boards tucked under their arms.

By Stephanie Rosenbloom, New York Times

© 2014 The New York Times Company