Palos Verdes Estates

Malaga Cove

Where the Peninsula begins. The arcaded Malaga Cove Plaza (1925) was the first of four planned village centers and remains the Hill's most beautiful commercial block — bookended by the Neptune Fountain, the Myron Hunt-designed library on its garden knoll, and La Venta Inn on the ridge above. Homes range from original 1920s Mediterranean villas on Via Somonte to bluff-edge contemporaries above Torrance Beach; from the right street you can watch the whole Santa Monica Bay light up at dusk.

Down the switchback lies Malaga Cove itself — "RAT Beach" to generations of local kids — and the paddle-tennis courts and pool of the Palos Verdes Beach & Athletic Club.

Valmonte

The warmest, most tucked-away corner of PVE, spread beneath a canopy of blue-gum eucalyptus planted in the 1880s as a railroad woodlot. Valmonte's lanes feel like a storybook — smaller lots, deep porches, and a horse-country border where the neighborhood meets the Palos Verdes Stables and the golf course. Locals call the microclimate the city's sunniest; the fog often stops at the tree line.

Lunada Bay

PVE's largest neighborhood curves around its namesake half-moon bay, where winter swells break over the reef made famous — and occasionally infamous — by generations of surfers, and where the bow of the Greek freighter Dominator rusted on the rocks for decades after its 1961 wreck. Above the bluffs: the little Lunada Bay village with its markets and cafés, tree-named lanes of mid-century ranches, and Lunada Bay Elementary. The bluff-top path at sunset is the neighborhood's daily ritual.

Montemalaga

The high ground. Montemalaga climbed the hill last — mostly 1950s and '60s single-level ranches on broad lots — and got the payoff: queen's-chair views over the entire bay, from Malibu's ridgeline to the city skyline. Montemalaga Elementary anchors the neighborhood, and the drive down Via Del Monte, through century-old eucalyptus with the ocean filling the windshield, is one of the great commutes in America.