Warner Bros. Studios Burbank

Where it sits. The Warner Bros. lot fills roughly 110 acres between Warner Boulevard, Hollywood Way, Riverside Drive and Olive Avenue in Burbank, on the San Fernando Valley side of the Hollywood Hills. The Los Angeles River runs in its concrete channel along the southern edge; the Walt Disney Studios sit a few blocks west on Buena Vista Street and the old NBC broadcast complex a few blocks north, which is why this square mile of Burbank has been called the media capital of the world on its own city signage. The water tower with the WB shield, standing since the late 1920s, is visible from the freeway and functions as the lot's address.

The story behind it. The studio was not originally theirs. First National Pictures built the Burbank plant in 1926 and 1927 as a modern replacement for its cramped facilities, and Warner Bros. — flush with the success of sound pictures — acquired control of First National in 1928 and moved across from its Sunset Boulevard studio in Hollywood. The lot grew through the 1930s into the tightly packed grid of stages, mill buildings and craft shops that it remains. From 1972 to 1990 it operated as The Burbank Studios, shared with Columbia Pictures, before reverting to the Warner name. Today it holds around three dozen sound stages, several standing exterior sets, post-production facilities and the corporate offices of the studio.

What is on the ground. Stage 16 is among the tallest sound stages in the world at roughly 99 feet, with an in-floor tank deep enough for marine work; it is where large water and flying sequences have been staged for a century. Outside the stages, the backlot streets do the heavy lifting: Midwest Street, a New England town square whose Colonial and clapboard fronts were built in the 1930s; French Street and the Jungle, an all-purpose European and tropical corner; and New York Street, a two-block grid of brownstones and warehouse fronts redressed constantly. The Warner Bros. Ranch, a separate parcel in Burbank that held the studio's residential street sets, was sold off in 2019 and is being redeveloped, which is why some famous house exteriors from television history no longer exist.

On screen. The list of productions made here is effectively a history of American film and television, and a few illustrate what the lot actually contributes.

• Casablanca (1942): the entire film was made on this lot, including the airport finale, which was staged on a stage with fog machines, a cut-out aircraft in forced perspective and short-statured extras working around it to sell the scale. No one went to Morocco.
• Rebel Without a Cause (1955) was a Warner production; its Griffith Observatory exteriors were location work, but the interiors and the mansion sequence were built here.
• Friends filmed for ten seasons on Stage 24, and The Big Bang Theory for twelve on Stage 25 — the two stages now carry commemorative signage.
• Gilmore Girls used Midwest Street as Stars Hollow, redressing the same square that has played dozens of other American towns.
• La La Land (2016) shot on the lot itself: the coffee shop where Mia works sits under a studio colonnade, and the sequence in which she walks past a window from Casablanca is a piece of deliberate self-reference filmed where that window belongs.

What a visit is like. The Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood, which began in 1973 and has been progressively expanded, is the only way onto the lot for the public. It runs about three hours: an electric tram through the working streets and past stages that may or may not be shooting that day, then a set of walk-through exhibits. The permanent displays include the DC Universe collection with screen-used Batmobiles and costumes, a Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts stage with original props and set pieces, and a faithful reconstruction of the Central Perk set from Friends that visitors can sit in. Because the lot is a working studio, no two tours see the same thing; production activity determines the route on the day.

Getting there and timing. The tour departs from Gate 6 at 3400 West Riverside Drive in Burbank, with paid parking on site; Burbank's downtown Metrolink station and the Hollywood Way bus routes are within reach, but a car is the practical option. Tours run daily from morning to late afternoon, tickets are timed and sell out in summer and at holidays, and the minimum age is generally set at five. Weekdays in the production season — roughly autumn through spring — give the best chance of seeing crews at work; summer and hiatus weeks are quieter on the streets but easier to book. Comfortable shoes matter, since a substantial part of the tour is on foot across asphalt.