Apple Tower Theatre: LA’s 1927 Movie Palace, Free to Visit

Quick answer

• Apple Tower Theatre is free to enter. No ticket, no appointment, no purchase.
• 802 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90014. Phone (213) 655-1200.
• Hours: Monday to Saturday 10am–8pm, Sunday 10am–7pm. Check on the day — Apple changes holiday hours.
• The building is the Tower Theatre, opened in 1927, the first cinema in Los Angeles wired for sound.
• Today at Apple sessions are free and open to everyone. Book ahead online.
• Allow 20 minutes to look round properly, or 60–90 minutes if you take a session.

We went in to buy an iPad and came out having spent most of our time looking at the ceiling.

Apple Tower Theatre is a working Apple store inside a 1927 movie palace, and it is one of the very few buildings in the Broadway Theater District that anyone can walk into on an ordinary afternoon without a ticket or a tour booking.

Our kids took three free classes there. We bought the iPad. But the thing we still talk about is the painted sky over the staircase.

Here is what to look for, what the free classes are actually like with children, and how to fit it into a downtown day.

Why this is the one Broadway theatre you can actually get into

South Broadway holds twelve movie palaces built between 1910 and 1931, spread over eight blocks between Second Street and Olympic Boulevard. It is the first and largest theatre district ever listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

And almost all of them are shut to you. Some are churches. Some are event spaces you can only enter with a ticket. Some open a handful of times a year for classic film screenings and nothing else.

The Tower is the exception, and it is an accident of what happened to it: Apple took a 1927 cinema, restored it properly, and then — because it is a shop — left the doors open six days a week.

You do not have to buy anything. You do not have to book anything. You can walk in, look up, and walk out.

That is a genuinely unusual thing to be able to do, and it is why this stop is worth twenty minutes even if nobody in your family cares about Apple products.

Six things to look for inside

The restoration was done by Foster + Partners and finished in 2021. It is careful work, and most people walk past the best of it because they are looking at iPhones.

1. The staircase and the entry hall. Restored in the style of Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera House — the building the Tower was modelled on in 1927. Marble columns, bronze handrails, red carpet. Go up it slowly.

2. The painted sky. A fresco of a blue and cloudy sky arches over the double-height space. It is the thing everyone photographs and it is worth standing still under for a moment.

3. The stained glass window — and what is in the pattern. It was painstakingly restored, and the pattern contains coiled strips of film. Once you have seen it you cannot unsee it. This is the detail to point out to children; it turns a window into a puzzle.

4. The arch where the screen used to be. Apple’s video wall now hangs in the restored proscenium arch — exactly where the cinema screen hung for sixty years.

5. The old cinema seats. The original seating in the upper balcony was reupholstered rather than replaced. If you have a Genius Bar appointment, you are sitting in a 1927 cinema seat.

6. The clock tower, from outside. Restored along with the blade sign and the canopy over Broadway. Look at the building from the opposite pavement before you go in — you cannot see what it is from underneath it.

The free classes: Today at Apple

Today at Apple sessions are free at every Apple store in the world, and this one is no different in that respect. What is different is the room you take them in.

They are genuinely free. No purchase, no membership. You book a place on the Apple website or in the Apple Store app, you turn up, and that is it.

Book ahead. Weekend sessions and anything involving drawing or photography fill up. Weekday morning sessions are much easier to get into and quieter, which matters if you have children with you.

The sessions run in the store itself, around the Forum and the video wall — so you are sitting in the auditorium of a 1927 cinema while somebody teaches you to use Procreate. That is the appeal.

This store also launched Today at Apple Creative Studios when it opened in 2021 — a programme built around mentoring young creatives. Worth knowing if you have a teenager who is serious about art, music or film.

What we did there

We took three sessions.

Maps on iPhone — the practical one, and the one that has been most useful since. Offline maps, live traffic, building custom routes. If you travel with a phone as your only navigation, this is the session to take.

Drawing in Procreate — sketching, layers, brushes. This was the one the kids wanted and the one they stayed with longest.

iPhone photography — portrait mode, night mode, editing. Straightforward, and it changed how we shoot on trips.

And we bought an iPad. The staff were unhurried about it, which we did not expect in a store that busy — we were talked through the differences rather than sold the expensive one.

Doing it with kids

Honestly: it is a twenty-minute stop for most families, and that is fine.

What works:

• It is free, indoors and air-conditioned — which in downtown LA in August is not a small thing
• The stained glass film-strip puzzle gives younger children something to hunt for
• There are things to touch. Every device is switched on. For a child who has been marched round three outdoor sights, a room full of iPads is a mercy.
• Toilets and a place to sit down in a part of downtown where both can be hard to find

What to expect:

• It gets busy at weekends and after 4pm. Mornings are calmer.
• The upstairs balcony is quieter than the ground floor
• A booked session is 30–60 minutes of sitting and listening. Judge that against your own children honestly — ours were fine at the drawing session and restless at the Maps one.

Practical details

Address	802 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90014
Phone	(213) 655-1200
Hours	Mon–Sat 10am–8pm · Sun 10am–7pm
Cost	Free to enter. Sessions free.
Booking	Not needed to visit. Needed for sessions and the Genius Bar.
Nearest Metro	Pershing Square station, then walk south on Broadway
How long	20 minutes to look; 60–90 with a session

Getting there. It is on the corner of Broadway and 8th, in the middle of the historic theatre district. If you are already in downtown you are almost certainly within walking distance.

Parking. Street parking on Broadway is metered and hard. There are paid lots on 8th and on Hill Street. We would walk or take the Metro rather than drive to this one.

What else is nearby

This is the strength of this stop: it sits in the middle of everything else downtown.

• Grand Central Market and Angels Flight — about a ten-minute walk straight up Broadway. Lunch, and the shortest funicular railway in the world.
• The Last Bookstore — one block over on Spring Street. Free, and the tunnel of books is the single most photographed thing in downtown LA after the Bradbury Building.
• City Hall’s observation deck — free, open weekdays, and the best view of downtown you can get without paying.
• Crypto.com Arena and the statues — further south, walkable if you are up for it, otherwise a short ride.

A good downtown morning: City Hall observation deck → walk down to Grand Central Market for lunch → Angels Flight → Broadway to the Tower Theatre. All of it free except lunch and 75 cents each on the funicular.

Where we stayed

We stayed at The Biltmore Los Angeles in the historic core, about a fifteen-minute walk from Broadway.

Some links below are affiliate links. If you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Internal link: stay at The Biltmore Los Angeles

Affiliate link: see current rates for The Biltmore

Is it worth going?

If you are already in downtown LA: yes, without hesitation. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and it is the only chance most visitors will get to stand inside a Broadway movie palace.

If you would be crossing the city for it: no, not on its own. Build it into a downtown morning with City Hall, Grand Central Market and Angels Flight and it becomes a good half-day.

If your children need a break from the heat and the walking: it is the best free indoor stop in the historic core.

our full Los Angeles guide