Washington, D.C. travel guide

Top 10 sights in Washington, D.C.

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© This image or media was taken or created by Matt H. Wade. To see his entire port · CC BY-SA 3.0

   White House

   The residence and office of every US president since John Adams in 1800, burned by British troops in 1814 and gutted to a steel frame under Truman between 1948 and 1952. Public tours are free but must be requested through a member of Congress, months ahead.

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   2© Oren Rozen · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Washington Monument

   An obelisk of 169 metres honouring George Washington, the tallest stone structure in the world when finished in 1884. Work stopped for twenty-two years over funding and the Civil War, so the marble above the level reached in 1854 is a visibly different shade.

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   Smithsonian Institution

   The world's largest museum and research complex, founded on the bequest of an English chemist who never visited America, and now nineteen museums and the National Zoo. Every one of them is free, which is what makes Washington a cheap city to spend a week in.

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   Arlington National Cemetery

   A cemetery of 259 hectares on the Virginia side of the Potomac, begun in 1864 on land confiscated from Robert E. Lee's family. About twenty-five funerals are held each weekday; the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier runs every hour.

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   5© AgnosticPreachersKid · CC BY-SA 3.0

   National Gallery of Art

   A national art museum given to the nation in 1937 by Andrew Mellon along with his collection, and holding the only Leonardo painting in the Americas. Its two buildings — Pope's neoclassical West and I. M. Pei's angular East — are joined by an underground concourse.

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   Lincoln Memorial

   A Greek Doric temple of 1922 with thirty-six columns for the states of the Union at Lincoln's death, and the Gettysburg Address cut into the south wall. Martin Luther King spoke from its steps in August 1963; the spot is marked.

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   National Mall

   A landscaped park running three kilometres from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, laid out on L'Enfant's 1791 plan and largely built on land dredged from the Potomac. Most of the Smithsonian museums line it, and it is where America protests.

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   National Museum of Natural History

   The most visited natural history museum in the world, with 148 million specimens, of which the Hope Diamond and a standing African elephant draw the crowds. Admission is free and the fossil hall reopened in 2019 after a five-year rebuild.

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   Washington National Cathedral

   A Gothic cathedral begun in 1907 and finished in 1990, built stone on stone with flying buttresses and no steel frame, and the sixth largest in the world. One gargoyle high on the north-west tower is Darth Vader, chosen by children in a 1980s competition.

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    10© King of Hearts · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Jefferson Memorial

    A domed rotunda of 1943 on the Tidal Basin, modelled on the Pantheon that Jefferson admired and filled by a bronze figure of him five metres high. The cherry trees around it, given by Tokyo in 1912, make this the centre of the spring bloom.

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   Kryptos

   A sculpture of 1990 in the CIA courtyard bearing four encrypted passages, of which three were solved by 1999 and the fourth remains unbroken after thirty-five years. The artist has released four clues; the grounds are closed, so most people see it in photographs.

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   2© David J. Jackson · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Vietnam Veterans Memorial

   Two walls of black granite sunk into the ground, listing 58,000 dead in the order they died rather than alphabetically, designed by a twenty-one-year-old student in a blind competition in 1981. The polish reflects the visitor, which was the intention.

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   3© AgnosticPreachersKid · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

   The largest Catholic church in North America, begun in 1920 and built over seventy years in a Byzantine-Romanesque style with no structural steel. More than eighty chapels reflect the national devotions of immigrant communities who paid for them.

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   4© David Bjorgen · CC BY-SA 3.0

   National Air and Space Museum

   The museum that holds the Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer, the Spirit of St Louis and the Apollo 11 command module in the same building. It reopened wing by wing through a renovation completed in 2026; the Udvar-Hazy annexe near Dulles keeps the larger aircraft.

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   United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

   A museum opened in 1993 beside the Mall, where visitors are given the identity card of a real person and follow the Holocaust chronologically down three floors. Timed passes are needed for the permanent exhibition from March to August.

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   Capitol Hill

   The neighbourhood around the Capitol, and one of the oldest residential districts in Washington, of brick row houses on a grid that L'Enfant laid out. Eastern Market has traded on Seventh Street since 1873 and is where the area buys its Saturday food.

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   7© G. Edward Johnson · CC BY 4.0

   National Museum of American History

   The Smithsonian's museum of the American story, holding the Star-Spangled Banner flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814, kept in a dim chamber at ten degrees of tilt. Ruby slippers, Julia Child's kitchen and the lunch counter from Greensboro are all here.

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   Marine Corps War Memorial

   A bronze of six servicemen raising the flag on Iwo Jima, cast at ten metres from Joe Rosenthal's photograph and dedicated in 1954 near Arlington Cemetery. The Marine Band and Silent Drill Platoon perform here on summer Tuesday evenings.

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   9© Sebastian Wallroth · CC BY 3.0

   Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

   A memorial opened in 2011 in West Potomac Park, where a nine-metre granite figure of King stands pushed forward from a split boulder — the Stone of Hope drawn out of the Mountain of Despair. Fourteen of his quotations are cut into the surrounding wall.

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    10© David Monack · CC BY-SA 3.0 us

    Newseum

    A museum of news and the First Amendment that stood at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue from 2008 and closed at the end of 2019, unable to cover its costs. Its front carried the day's front pages from across the country; the collection is in storage.

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