Washington D.C.

The Capitol’s design evolved through contributions from William Thornton, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and Charles Bulfinch before Thomas U. Walter added the iconic dome between 1855 and 1866. Lincoln insisted work continue on the dome during the Civil War as a symbol that the Union would endure, and the Statue of Freedom was hoisted to its crown in December 1863.

The building houses the Senate and House chambers, the Capitol Rotunda with its Brumidi frescoes, and the old Supreme Court chamber.

The building, completed in 1935 and designed by John Russell Pope in a neoclassical style, serves as the public face of the National Archives and Records Administration. The Rotunda’s Charters of Freedom are encased in argon-filled titanium and aluminum enclosures to prevent deterioration, and the parchment documents remain largely legible despite their age.

Beyond the Charters exhibit, the Archives hold billions of pages of federal records spanning census data, military service records, immigration files, and congressional proceedings. The institution is the primary research destination for historians and genealogists working with government materials dating back to the founding era.

The Mall’s layout was largely shaped by the McMillan Plan of 1902, which formalized Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s original vision for the capital as a grand civic axis. The Washington Monument — at 555 feet the world’s tallest obelisk when completed in 1884 — anchors the Mall’s midpoint and aligns with the White House to the north and the Jefferson Memorial to the south across the Tidal Basin.

The Mall has hosted defining moments in American public life, from the 1963 March on Washington to presidential inaugurations and national memorials.

The White House was constructed between 1792 and 1800 on a site selected by George Washington, though he never lived there. After the British burned the building in August 1814, James Hoban supervised its reconstruction, and the exterior sandstone was painted white — a practice that became permanent and gave the residence its modern name.

Congressional tour requests allow visitors access to the State Floor rooms, including the East Room, the Red and Blue and Green rooms, and the State Dining Room. These spaces have hosted treaty signings, state dinners, press briefings, and presidential addresses throughout more than two centuries of American political history.

On the night of April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln during a performance of “Our American Cousin” in the presidential box on the theatre’s dress circle level. Lincoln was carried across Tenth Street to the Petersen House, where he died the following morning. Booth escaped through the stage door and was killed twelve days later at a Virginia farm.

The National Park Service restored and reopened the theatre in 1968 as both a working performance venue and a museum. The basement museum holds Lincoln’s deathbed, Booth’s single-shot derringer, the clothes Lincoln wore that evening, and a large collection of artifacts documenting the assassination and its immediate aftermath.

The museum’s flagship galleries include the 1903 Wright Flyer, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, and the Apollo 11 command module Columbia — the capsule that carried Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins on the first lunar landing mission in July 1969. Many of the aircraft and spacecraft on display are the original vehicles rather than replicas.

Exhibits cover military aviation from World War I through the jet age, the Cold War space race between the United States and Soviet Union, rocketry, and the development of commercial air travel. The museum’s location directly on the Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument makes it one of the most visited institutions in the world.

The museum opened in 1964 as the Museum of History and Technology before being renamed in 1980. Its centerpiece, the Star-Spangled Banner, is a 30-by-34-foot wool bunting flag commissioned by Fort McHenry’s commander before the War of 1812. After inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem, the flag was preserved by the Armistead family and donated to the Smithsonian in 1907.

Collections range from inaugural gowns and presidential artifacts to Julia Child’s kitchen, Thomas Edison’s experimental light bulbs, and the original Kermit the Frog puppet. The museum’s American Democracy and American Presidency galleries document the country’s political history through objects that witnessed it firsthand.

Nationals Park replaced RFK Stadium as the Nationals’ home after the franchise relocated from Montreal in 2005. The 41,339-seat ballpark was designed by HOK Sport and opened in March 2008 with President George W. Bush throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. Its construction anchored a major redevelopment of the Southeast waterfront neighborhood.

The 2016 trip brought a Phillies-Nationals matchup, continuing the tradition of pairing presidential and historical sites with a major league game. The park’s upper deck offers views toward the Capitol dome, placing baseball against one of the most recognizable skylines in American civic architecture.

Chief Justice William Howard Taft — the only person to serve as both president and Chief Justice — was the primary advocate for giving the Court its own building after it had shared space with Congress for nearly 150 years. The building, designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1935, features Corinthian columns, bronze doors, and a Great Hall lined with busts of former Chief Justices.

The Court’s exterior and public spaces are accessible to visitors, and the Chamber itself is open when the Court is not in session. Landmark decisions on civil rights, presidential power, and the reach of the Constitution have been handed down from the bench inside, making the building a focal point of American legal and political history.

Arlington National Cemetery was established during the Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, the estate of Robert E. Lee’s wife Mary Anna Custis. The first burials were Union soldiers in 1864, placed deliberately close to the house to prevent the Lee family from reclaiming the property. The estate had been seized by the federal government after the Custis family failed to pay property taxes in person during the war.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a marble sarcophagus on a plaza overlooking Washington, has been guarded continuously by the Army’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment since 1937. Nearby, the gravesite of President Kennedy — marked by an eternal flame — was dedicated in 1967 and became one of the most visited memorials in the country within months of opening.

The museum opened in April 1993 after a decade of planning led by a presidentially appointed commission. Its permanent exhibition, “The Holocaust,” occupies three floors and uses artifacts, photographs, film, and survivor testimonies to document the rise of the Nazi regime, the progression of persecution, and the systematic murder of six million Jews along with millions of others.

The building, designed by James Ingo Freed, incorporates architectural elements that echo the industrial brutality of the camps — exposed brick and steel, surveillance windows, and claustrophobic passageways. A glass-roofed Hall of Remembrance at the building’s center provides a space for individual reflection and candle lighting in memory of victims.