--- description: Find out why NHM Commons is on TIME’s list of the World’s Greatest Places 2025. title: NHM Commons: World's Greatest Places 2025 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d3b7934b038f707/6998c4c347fe5175c755b81a/Worlds-Greatest-Places-2025-NHMCommons.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Mar 13, 2025 # NHM Commons Los Angeles by [AnneLise Sorensen](/author/annelise-sorenson/) ## AnneLise Sorensen Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Benny Chan—Courtesy NHM Commons L.A.’s newest star isn’t a YouTuber gone viral but an ancient giantess. Meet Gnatalie, an immense long-neck dinosaur—an astonishingly complete sauropod skeleton that greets visitors at the newly transformed $75 million wing of the Natural History Museum. The 75,000-square-foot [NHM Commons](https://nhm.org/nhm-commons "undefined") lives up to its name: this is, above all, a community space. The architecture firm Frederick Fisher and Partners aimed to bring the outdoors in, with a gleaming glass façade that opens up the museum to the surrounding Exposition Park. The new Commons Plaza serves as a vibrant gathering place with a courtyard, amphitheater, and garden. Culture has as much of a place here as science: there are outdoor installations by Tongva artist Lazaro Arvizu, Jr.; the dazzling, once-censored, 80-foot mural [_L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective_](https://nhm.org/mural-remembers-los-angeles "undefined"), by Barbara Carrasco, depicting the city past and present, woven through the hair of la Reina de Los Ángeles; and the new [South LA Café](https://www.southlacafe.com/ "undefined"), a mission-driven institution serving horchata lattes and other goodies. A new multi-purpose theater features a plethora of films, educational content co-created with locals, puppet shows, and, yes, dinos, in the splashy new [_T.REX 3D_](https://nhm.org/calendar/t-rex-3d-film "undefined")—narrated, no less, by _Jurassic Park_ actor Sam Neill. Over at Exposition Park, the highly anticipated [Lucas Museum of Narrative Art](https://lucasmuseum.org/museum/ "undefined") is slated to open in 2026 and the greenspace is undergoing a five-ring transformation for the 2028 Olympic Games. **Correction, March 14** _The original version of this story misstated the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art's opening date. It will open in 2026, not 2025._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/worlds-greatest-places-2025/7263093/nhm-commons/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/worlds-greatest-places-2025/7263093/nhm-commons/"},"headline":"NHM Commons","datePublished":"2025-03-13T12:35:31.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:44:57.434Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/worlds-greatest-places-2025/7263093/nhm-commons/","keywords":["World's Greatest Places","list","franchise","Magazine","sponsorshipblock","WGP2025"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d3b7934b038f707/6998c4c347fe5175c755b81a/Worlds-Greatest-Places-2025-NHMCommons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"AnneLise Sorensen","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/annelise-sorenson/"}],"creator":"AnneLise Sorensen","articleSection":"World","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d3b7934b038f707/6998c4c347fe5175c755b81a/Worlds-Greatest-Places-2025-NHMCommons.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/worlds-greatest-places/","name":"World's Greatest Places"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/worlds-greatest-places-2025/7263093/nhm-commons/","name":"NHM Commons"}}]}] ```