NO matter if Herakles has fallen off your holiday card list. Never mind if you don't know an \o7alabastron\f7 from a \o7loutrophoros\f7. Odds are you will soon find yourself at the Getty Villa on the edge of Malibu, maybe trailing a loved one, maybe squiring out-of-towners. After an eight-year closure for renovation and litigation, the villa finally reopens Saturday.
But where do you start?
Here's what you need to know. First, Herakles is dead, so no worries there. Second, just by crossing the threshold, you'll be one up on J. Paul Getty. Though he dreamed up the villa in about 1968, the old man spent most of his time in England and never got around to visiting the completed project. He died in 1976, two years after the villa first opened to the public.
But be warned: Though admission is free, you do need a time-specific reservation and $7 in cash for parking. And though more tickets may be released, as of press time, all of the available reservations had been snapped up through July 31. So you may have time to digest this philistine's guide before putting it to use.
Making an entrance
Once you've made the Getty turn off, Pacific Coast Highway, drive along the Roman-road flagstones that climb the lushly landscaped canyon and look for the parking structure on the left. It's three levels, topped by a meadow, just to keep things looking pastoral.
Once you're parked, head for the entry pavilion and start looking up. If you don't take the elevators, it's about 50 yards of walking and 96 stairsteps to the arrival balcony or, as the architecturally inclined like to say, "the big reveal."
From here you'll see that, as sure as Theseus slew the Minotaur, you're in the middle of someplace extraordinary, someplace that cost $275 million to redesign and rebuild. Spread before you lie the museum entrance (to your right at about 2 o'clock), the restaurant and shop (to your left at 11 o'clock), and the outdoor theater, fanned out at your feet. In fact, the most direct path to the museum entrance is to step down the descending levels of the theater.
Before the villa closed for this renovation in mid-1997, a restaurant stood where the outdoor theater is now. And that's just the beginning of the changes. Scanning the site from here, you get a glimpse of the challenge the villa's redesigners had: The 64-acre Getty property is steeply sloped, with well-heeled, noise-wary, traffic-averse, litigation-ready neighbors all around.
