Grand Central Market opened in October 1917, billed as the largest and finest public market on the Pacific Coast. It fills the ground floor of the Homer Laughlin Building, itself no slouch: built in 1896, it was one of the first steel reinforced, fireproof buildings in Los Angeles. For decades, well heeled Bunker Hill residents rode the Angels Flight funicular downhill to shop here, past ninety-odd stalls of produce and pastries.

The market's fortunes dipped along with downtown's after the war, then rebounded; today its forty-some vendors, from decades-old noodle counters to newer taco stands, draw two million visitors yearly and turn up regularly as film backdrops.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the market as a fitting finale to downtown's rise, fall and revitalisation, tracing the route shoppers once rode down from Bunker Hill and explaining how a market built for the elite became the city's most democratic dining room.