Olvera Street

The street sits inside El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, the site where Spanish colonial settlers founded the city in 1781; the surrounding plaza was rebuilt in the 1820s after flooding forced the original settlement to relocate. The Avila Adobe, built in 1818 at what is now 10 Olvera Street, is the oldest surviving house in Los Angeles, with adobe walls roughly a meter thick.

In 1926, preservationist Christine Sterling learned of plans to demolish the Avila Adobe and campaigned to save it, a project that grew into turning the whole street into a Mexican-style marketplace. It opened on Easter Sunday in 1930 as Paseo de Los Angeles, later renamed Olvera Street, and the historic Plaza Church across from it has served the surrounding community since the pueblo's early years.

Because the marketplace and its vendors operate largely in Spanish alongside English, it can feel especially approachable to Spanish-speaking newcomers, and walking through it costs nothing beyond whatever visitors choose to buy from the shops and food stalls.