Echo Park, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, is bouncing back on the shoulders of its many personalities. The area's fame has recently grown, perhaps most notably since crime novelist Michael Connelly sent his homicide detective Harry Bosch prowling there, in the 2006 bestseller titled Echo Park. That same year, the independent film Quinceanera, a coming-of-age story set in the neighbourhood's Latino community, with a subtheme of the quarter's increasing gentrification, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

The picturesque district is a five-minute drive from the city's downtown attractions of Disney Hall, Deco architecture, and the El Pueblo plaza and marketplace. For visitors looking to leave the major tourist sites behind and wander through a quaint but lively multi-ethnic L.A. neighbourhood, Echo Park is the perfect choice.

The district takes its name from a charming, popular park built more than 100 years ago around a six-hectare man-made lake. Because of the hills to the park's east and west, one can indeed hear an echo to a loud shout -- when the noise of traffic does not interfere. Joggers, walkers, tai chi practitioners, parents and their energetic children, young lovers, vendors of fresh peeled mangos topped with chili pepper, and homeless folks with sleeping bags all share the park.

One can rent a paddle boat at the boat house (built in 1932 in the Spanish-Colonial style), and each July the park hosts a festival of Asian-Pacific cultures. It has been called the Lotus Festival because a huge expanse of lotus blossoms historically has been a magnificent feature of the park. Two years ago, for the first time in memory, the giant pink lotus blooms at the park's northwest corner were few, though no one could say why.

This year there were no lotuses at all. Again, no cause has been established for their demise.

Birdwatchers have reported some 40 species of birds, including ducks, geese, wigeons, grebes and coots in the lake, and blackbirds, starlings, swallows, cormorants, and bright green wild parrots in the trees. Egrets, blue herons, and gulls fly in and out.

Across the street from the lotus bed is the 5,000-seat Angelus Temple, erected in 1923 to house the church of the flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who had come to Los Angeles after leading revivals across the United States. While the church still attracts large numbers to its services, gone is the grandiosity of the scandal-dogged "Sister Aimee," who borrowed costumes and scenery from Hollywood movie studios to stage Bible skits for her congregation.

The film studios moved to Hollywood before the First World War, but they began with silent films made in converted cottages in Echo Park, including several starring Charlie Chaplin and the comic duo Laurel and Hardy. The area has been used for location shots for everything from westerns to the 1960s TV series Gilligan's Island to Michael Jackson's now-classic music video Thriller. It's still common to find film crews camped out among the locals near Echo Park Lake.

Echo Park was home to creative people of all types during the 20th century, including social critic Carey McWilliams, film director John Huston, jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, and rock star Jackson Browne. Actress Gloria Swanson lived for a time in the Angelino Heights section, in the hills immediately east of the park. These blocks have the highest concentration of Victorian houses in L.A., and it's a delight to walk the streets and see the restored and imaginatively painted homes.

Here, as in other parts of Echo Park, gentrifying newcomers co-exist with the working-class immigrant families who settled in the area from the 1960s through the 1990s, alongside the resident artists, hippies and radicals.

Blocks of large homes abut streets with modest dwellings; many have gardens overflowing with bougainvillea, a common sight throughout Los Angeles. There are stunning views of the mountains to the north and east.

It's a quick walk to the shopping area on Sunset Boulevard. Here one finds discount clothing stores mixed in with high-end boutiques and vintage shops, cheap burrito and pupusa stands and expensive restaurants.

At the corner of Sunset and Echo Park Ave. (a block from the lake), you can't miss the brilliantly coloured mural stretching around the clinic on the corner. Street murals are ubiquitous throughout Los Angeles -- there are many in Echo Park -- and they often reflect themes of Mexican or Central American cultural heritage.

North from there on Echo Park Ave., and up the hill to one's right on Morton (opposite Chango, the funky neighbourhood hangout cafe), there is another fascinating mural, albeit graffiti-marred.

This mural leads into the 230-hectare Elysian Park, another feature of the Echo Park district, with both dirt hiking trails and a large manicured expanse of grass with towering shade trees and picnic tables. There are other entries to the park, including one at the top of the Baxter St. stairs (all 212 of them), which start a few blocks above Echo Park Ave. The stairs are worth the hike, with Echo Park spreading out beneath you as you climb, and the Hollywood sign on the hills in the distance.

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IF YOU GO

If you plan to wander more than around the park and on Sunset Blvd., you would be wise to print up a few online maps, since the streets twist and wind. The area's zip code is 90026. Searching for 1200 Echo Park Ave. will centre you between Sunset Blvd. and the lake; 1400 Carroll Ave. is a block with a concentration of Victorians (though several others are dotted around nearby); 1500 Baxter St. is at the bottom of the stairs, and Morton St. is between Sunset and Baxter.

The website of the Echo Park Historical Society, www.historicechopark.org, has a wealth of information and photos.

There's a wide range of restaurants on Sunset Blvd., but if you're looking for local colour (and a cut above a taco stand or fried sausages and onions from a street vendor), you might try Barragan's (1538 W. Sunset Blvd.), a Mexican restaurant started in 1961 as a 25-seat diner and now able to seat 350. You can even have breakfast there, with napales con huevos, cactus with eggs. (Cactus, a common vegetable, is available at the local markets.)