Where to Stay in Burbank, California

What is Burbank known for?

Burbank is known as a media and studio city in California, long tied to film and television production. The Warner Bros. Museum stands at the centre of that reputation, drawing visitors to a city whose name has become shorthand for the studios and soundstages of the screen industry.

Aviation runs deep here too, marked by the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation. The Travel Town Museum and the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum pull those who come for trains. Screen and sky define it.

What are the main landmarks in Burbank?

Burbank collects landmarks around the screen, the sky, and the rails. The Warner Bros. Museum records the film and television industry, while the Travel Town Museum and the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum keep the machines of the railways.

Aviation has its own shrines here. The Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation and the Compass Rose cenotaph fountain dedicated to Harriet Quimby honour the early flyers. Older civic sites survive as well, among them the Gordon R. Howard Museum, the Mentzer House, the Martial Arts History Museum, and the Burbank Centennial Walkway.

What is the history of Burbank?

Burbank was founded in 1887 in California, laid out as a town in the years when the region was filling with new settlers. It grew first as a farming and ranching community on the level land, and the early town left buildings that still stand. The Mentzer House stands from that first period, and the Gordon R. Howard Museum keeps the record of how the settlement began.

Farming came first. Aviation and the screen industry remade the city in the century after its founding. Burbank became a centre of flying, honoured now by the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation and the Compass Rose cenotaph fountain dedicated to Harriet Quimby, one of the early aviators.

The film and television studios followed, and the city grew into a media town whose story the Warner Bros. Museum now tells. The Burbank Centennial Walkway marks the hundred years since the founding of 1887, tracing the change from a farming settlement to a city of studios and aircraft.

Where is Burbank?

Burbank lies on the level valley floor of southern California, ringed by low hills. The city spreads across flat, dry ground, the kind of open plain that made it easy to lay out the studio lots and the wide residential grid. Hills close the view.

Between the surrounding rises the built-up land of Burbank runs on level terrain, part of the broad basin that fills this corner of California behind the coast.

What is the climate of Burbank?

Burbank has a warm, dry climate typical of southern California. Long, hot, rainless summers give way to mild winters when what little rain there is arrives, and clear skies hold over the valley through most of the year. Sunshine dominates.

The dry warmth of this inland part of California, sheltered behind the hills from the cooler coast, keeps Burbank warmer and drier than the shoreline through the seasons.

How do you get to Burbank?

Burbank is reached by road, rail, and its own airport in southern California. The freeways of the valley thread through the city and link it to the wider region, while commuter rail lines stop nearby on the routes across California. Its airport sits close in.

From that airfield and the highways around it, travellers reach Burbank and its studio district within a short run, tying the city into the transport network of the surrounding basin.