The District of Columbia, on the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia, was set aside as the nation's capital, so that the federal government would not be located in any single state.
Pierre-Charles L'Enfant was commissioned by George Washington to plan the city, and you can clearly see L'Enfant's layout of a street grid intersected by broad avenues.
The most important of these is Pennsylvania Avenue, connecting two iconic buildings: the White House and the impressive domed Capitol Building.
Alongside and maintaining L'Enfant's vision of an open and spacious city stretches the wide National Mall with its museums and monuments.
National symbols such as the Capitol and the White House are accessible to visitors, along with dozens of other tourist attractions, which include world-class museums
and important monuments.
Many of the most important things to see and do are in the northwestern quadrant along the National Mall and are best seen on foot.
Summer can be unpleasantly hot and humid, so the best times to visit Washington are spring and autumn.
Recognized around the world as a symbol of the United States, the Capitol is the seat of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The huge dome, based on the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, stands out above all other Washington buildings.
Like Washington itself, the building has grown over the years since the central portion was built between 1793 and 1812.
The last addition, in 1958-62, enlarged the main façade where presidents take the oath. On the other side, a marble terrace offers beautiful views over the mall and the city.
The interior is resplendent with frescoes, reliefs, and paintings, especially the rotunda under the great cast-iron dome with a ceiling painting by Constantino Brumidi
and huge paintings of scenes from American history on the walls.
Beside it is the former Chamber of the House of Representatives, with statues of leading historical figures.
The small Senate Rotunda leads into the beautifully restored Old Senate Chamber, where the Senate met until 1859, and the Supreme Court until 1935.
Housed in two separate buildings connected by a tunnel, the National Gallery of Art is one of the world's premier art museums and one of the most popular in the U.S.
Based on the sizable collection of financier and later Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, its large and diverse collection includes masterpieces of European and American paintings,
sculpture, and decorative arts.
Frequent temporary exhibitions add to this outstanding permanent collection to highlight arts from cultures around the world.
Among the highlights is Ginevra de Benci, the only Da Vinci painting in any American museum. Others include works by major French Impressionists — Monet, Degas, and Renoir --
and other masterpieces by Rembrandt, El Greco, and Vermeer.
The newer East Wing features sculptures by Henry Moore, a mobile by Alexander Calder, and other modern works.
Free concerts are held at the National Gallery on Sunday evenings from fall through spring.
The best-loved of all Washington's memorials, the Lincoln Memorial stands at the far end of the mall, separated from the Washington Monument by the Reflecting Pool.
At its center is a 19-foot marble statue of a seated and pensive President Abraham Lincoln surrounded by 36 columns, one for each of the states that existed at the time of Lincoln's death.
This is the most famous work designed by noted sculptor Daniel Chester French. Jules Guerin painted the murals on the inside walls, showing important events in Lincoln's life.
Since its completion in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial has been the scene of a number of historic events.
1n 1939, when the all-white Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)
refused to let celebrated African American singer Marian Anderson perform at a concert in nearby Constitution Hall, President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
arranged for her to give an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, attended by 75,000 people and broadcast to millions of radio listeners.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I have a dream..." speech from the memorial steps in 1963, again making history here.
The spacious swath of lawns and pools that forms a wide greenbelt from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial is also the site of many of Washington's landmark buildings and monuments.
Most prominent at its center point is the Washington Monument, and war memorials include those to veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a poignant wall inscribed with the names of all American servicemen and women who lost their lives or are missing, is one of Washington's most visited memorials.
The nearby Vietnam Women's Memorial has a bronze sculpture of three servicewomen helping a wounded soldier.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial contains 19 steel sculptures of soldiers. The newest, American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial was dedicated in 2014.
If you look at a Washington, D.C. attractions map, you'll notice that many of them line the National Mall, so you're likely to spend a lot of time here.
Along with providing a park for walking, running, and picnicking, the Mall is a place for celebrations and festivals. Best known of these is the annual Independence Day celebration
with fireworks around the Washington Monument. Also in July, the Smithsonian American Folk Life Festival fills the Mall with music, crafts, performances, storytelling,
cultural programs, and food from various regions around the country. The Smithsonian Kite Festival is held here in late March or early April.
The 555-foot white shaft of the Washington Monument is a familiar icon of the National Mall, and a beautiful sight, especially when mirrored in the long Reflecting Pool at its foot.
Construction of the obelisk to honor the nation's first president did not proceed smoothly. The plan was approved by Congress in 1783, but ground wasn't broken until 1848.
When the tower reached 156 feet in height in 1854, political wrangling and lack of funds stopped the project for several years, and the Civil War caused further interruption
so that the tower was not capped until 1885, when it was finally completed by the Army Corps of Engineers.
You can still see the separate stages of its building by three changes in the color of its facing stones; inside are engraved stones from various states,
cities, foreign countries, individuals, and civic groups, many of them donors who helped in its private funding stages.
You can take an elevator to the very top for aerial views over the mall and much of Washington. The base of the monument is surrounded by a circle of 50 American Flags.
The National Air and Space Museum is one of the world's most popular museums, with a collection of history-making air and spacecraft that includes the original 1903 Wright Brothers Flyer and Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis,
the first plane to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. More recent flight history is represented here by the Apollo 11 command module, part of the first manned lunar landing mission.
Permanent and changing exhibitions illustrate the science, history, and technology of aviation and space flight, covering topics like the use of air power in both world wars, the space race, flight pioneers,
and up-to-the-minute flight and space technology. Many of the exhibits are interactive, and all contain actual historical objects, such as a moon rock you can touch.
Not only do permanent exhibits illustrate history, they show the how and why of flight and space science, explaining how things fly, how jet engines work, and what keeps the International Space Station in orbit.
In addition to the exhibits, there is the Albert Einstein Planetarium, an IMAX theater, and the Public Observatory on the east terrace, where you can examine lunar craters and see planets and other astronomical features through telescopes.
Flight simulators (fee charged) allow kids and adults to fly combat missions with aerial maneuvers like 360-degree barrel rolls or experience naval aviation in an F-18 Super Hornet.
Focusing on themes of history, culture, and community, the newest of the Smithsonian museums explores changing definitions of American citizenship and equality, at the same time highlighting African American culture
and that of the entire African diaspora.
Various themes are covered in changing exhibits, which center on themes such as African American food traditions and chefs,
the influence of African American sports stars on the breakdown of segregation, and African craftsmanship.
Historic artifacts on display include a section of the original Woolworth lunch counter that was the scene of the Greensboro, N.C. sit-in in 1960, and the aircraft known as the "Spirit of Tuskegee."
In World War II, it was used to train African American airmen in the Army Air Forces, men whose work helped trigger the desegregation of the military.
The design for the domed white memorial to Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, is based on the Roman Pantheon, its low dome supported by 54 Ionic columns. Inside, appearing in a dramatic silhouette through the columns, is a 19-foot statue of a standing Jefferson,
and around are engraved excerpts of the Declaration of Independence and other writings.
The monument stands alone at the far end of the Tidal Pool, which reflects the monument in its surface,
and all around the edge of the water are cherry trees, a gift from Japan. These are one of Washington's greatest attractions when they bloom each spring, surrounding the basin with a cloud of pink flowers and celebrated with the Cherry Blossom Festival.
Along the Cherry Tree Walk around the Tidal Basin, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial reflects twelve years of American History through four outdoor rooms.
Each one is devoted to one of FDR's terms of office as he guided the country through the Great Depression and World War II.
The National Zoo is another part of the Smithsonian, where nearly 2,000 different animals, birds, and reptiles live in habitats replicating as closely as possible their natural environments.
Of the several hundred species represented here, about a quarter are endangered.
This is one of the world's best zoos, not only for the quality of the visitor experience, but for its leadership in areas of animal care and sustainability.
By far the most popular animals here are the giant pandas, part of a major initiative that began in 1972 with the arrival of Hsing Hsing from the People's Republic of China.
Other zoo highlights are red pandas, Sumatran tigers, western lowland gorillas, Asian elephants, cheetahs, white-naped cranes, and North Island brown kiwis. In the Amazonia exhibit,
you can glimpse the colorful underwater life of the Amazon, where one of the world's largest freshwater fish swims beneath a living tropical forest.
