Campus
The 64 acres (26 ha) museum complex sits on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which is about 100 feet (30 m) from the entrance to the property. Most visitors park in the new 248-car South Parking Garage, which is four stories high and set into a hillside. An outdoor 2,500-square-foot (230 m2) entry pavilion is also built into the hill near the South Parking garage at the southern end of the Outer Peristyle. The Outer Peristyle is a formal garden with roses and English ivy that includes a number of Roman sculptures. To the west of the Outer Peristyle is an herb garden. Beneath the Outer Peristyle is the Central Parking Garage. To the west of the Museum is a 450-seat outdoor Greek theater where evening performances are staged, named in honor of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman. The theater faces the west side of the Villa and uses its entrance as a stage. To the northwest of the theatre is a three-story, 15,500-square-foot (1,440 m2) building built into the hill that contains the museum store on the lower level, a cafe on the second level, and a private dining room on the top level. North of the Villa is a 10,000 sq ft (930 m2) indoor 250 seat auditorium. On the hill above the museum are Getty's original private ranch house and the museum wing that Getty added to his home in 1954. They are now used for curatorial offices, meeting rooms and as a library. Behind it is the 200-car North Parking Garage. The 105,500-square-foot (9,800 m2) museum building is arranged in a square opening into the Inner Peristyle courtyard. The 2006 museum renovation added 58 windows facing the Inner Peristyle and a retractable skylight over the atrium. It also replaced the terrazzo floors in the galleries and added seismic protection with new steel reinforcing beams and new isolators in the bases of statues and display cases. The museum has 48,000 sq ft (4,500 m2) of gallery space.
The museum wing off the Getty ranch house is home to the UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation, the first program of its kind in the United States. The degree program is a partnership between the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and the Getty Conservation Institute, and participates in research activities at the Villa.
Architectural critic Calum Storrie describes the overall effect:
What the Getty Villa achieves, first by seclusion, then by control of access, and ultimately through the architecture, is a sense of detachment from its immediate environment.
Although not open to the public, the campus includes J. Paul Getty's grave on the hill behind his ranch house.
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