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USS Constitution is a three-masted wooden frigate of the US Navy, launched in Boston in 1797 and still in commission, crewed by Navy sailors. It earned the name Old Ironsides in the War of 1812. The ship is berthed at the Charlestown Navy Yard, where visitors can go aboard, and the USS Constitution Museum beside it covers its history.

The United States National Arboretum covers 446 acres in Northeast Washington and was established by Congress in 1927; the Department of Agriculture runs it as a research centre. Its gardens include Asian collections, azaleas, the National Herb Garden and the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, and 22 sandstone columns from the Capitol's 1828 east portico stand in a meadow.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in northeast Washington is the patronal Catholic church of the United States, begun in 1920 in Byzantine and Romanesque Revival styles. Beneath its bell tower and mosaic-tiled dome are the Great Upper Church, the Crypt Church and more than 80 chapels; it became a minor basilica in 1990.

President Lincoln's Cottage is a Gothic Revival house of 1842–1843 on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home, today the Armed Forces Retirement Home. Abraham Lincoln and his family lived here from June to November in 1862, 1863 and 1864, and he drafted the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation here. Restored by the National Trust, it opened in 2008 and is seen on guided tours.

Rock Creek Park is a wooded valley park in northwest Washington, created by Congress in 1890 and run by the National Park Service. Its trails follow Rock Creek past the boulder-faced Boulder Bridge of 1902 and the 19th-century Peirce Mill, and the park also has a nature center with a planetarium, a horse center and picnic areas.

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens is the former home of businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post, a 1920s Georgian Revival mansion she bought in 1955; it opened as a museum in 1977. It holds her collection of Russian imperial art, including two Fabergé Easter eggs, and 18th-century French decorative arts, set in 25 acres of gardens with a French parterre and a rose garden.

Union Station is Washington's main railway station, designed by Daniel Burnham and opened in 1907 on Massachusetts Avenue near the Capitol. Its Beaux-Arts facade draws on the Arch of Constantine, and the vaulted main hall on the Baths of Diocletian. Besides Amtrak, commuter and Metro trains, the station houses shops and restaurants.

The National Postal Museum is a Smithsonian museum opened in 1993 in the former City Post Office, a 1914 Beaux-Arts building beside Union Station. It covers the postal history of the United States and other countries, with a large stamp gallery, three mail planes, a stagecoach, a replica railway mail car and a 1931 Ford Model A mail truck.

The Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill holds a collection of Shakespeare's printed works that includes 82 copies of the 1623 First Folio. Founded by Henry Clay and Emily Jordan Folger, it opened in 1932 in an Art Deco building by Paul Philippe Cret, and a 2024 renovation added public exhibition galleries and gardens.

The Supreme Court Building, one block east of the Capitol, has housed the highest court of the United States since 1935. Cass Gilbert designed it in the neoclassical style, with a marble portico inscribed 'Equal Justice Under Law'. Visitors can tour the public areas of the ground floor, see exhibitions on the Court, attend lectures in the Courtroom and watch public sessions.

The Thomas Jefferson Building, built between 1890 and 1897 across from the Capitol, is the oldest building of the Library of Congress. Visitors walk through the Great Hall with its marble staircases and painted ceilings, see the Main Reading Room under the central dome and visit exhibitions drawn from the library's collections.

Smithsonian's National Zoo is a zoo founded in 1889 in Rock Creek Park in northwest Washington and run by the Smithsonian Institution. Its 163-acre park on wooded slopes is laid out along trails such as Asia Trail, Elephant Trails and American Trail, with giant pandas, Asian elephants, great apes, lions, tigers and sea lions.

The United States Capitol is the seat of Congress at the eastern end of the National Mall. Its central part was completed in 1800 and its cast-iron dome around 1866. Visitors enter through the underground Capitol Visitor Center, which holds an exhibition hall and starts guided tours of the Crypt, the Rotunda and National Statuary Hall.

The National Building Museum is a museum of architecture, engineering and urban design in the former Pension Building, a red-brick building completed in 1887 to designs by Montgomery C. Meigs. Its Great Hall, framed by eight giant Corinthian columns, has hosted presidential inaugural balls, and exhibitions fill the galleries around it.

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site preserves Cedar Hill, the hilltop house in Anacostia where the abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass lived from 1877 until his death in 1895. Rangers lead guided tours of the furnished house; the grounds include a visitor centre, a rebuilt stone study called the Growlery and a view of the Capitol.

The National Portrait Gallery is a Smithsonian art museum in the Old Patent Office Building, a Greek Revival block in Penn Quarter built between 1836 and 1867. Founded in 1962 and opened in 1968, it shows portraits of Americans who shaped the country, among them the Hall of Presidents with a portrait of every president.

The United States Botanic Garden lies at the foot of the Capitol and is run by the Architect of the Capitol; Congress first granted it land in 1820. Its glass Conservatory, on this site since 1933, has rooms for jungle, desert, Hawaiian and orchid plants. The outdoor National Garden adjoins it, and Bartholdi Park lies across Independence Avenue.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum shares the Old Patent Office Building in Penn Quarter with the National Portrait Gallery. Its collection covers art made in the United States from the colonial period to today by more than 7,000 artists, and the glass-roofed Kogod Courtyard links the two museums.

The Witch House is the 17th-century home of Jonathan Corwin, a judge of the court that tried people accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. Corwin bought the unfinished house in 1675 and lived there for over 40 years. Saved from demolition in 1946 and moved back from the street, it is run by the City of Salem as a house museum on Puritan family life and the trials.

Planet Word is a museum of language that opened in 2020 in the Franklin School, an 1869 building by Adolf Cluss on Franklin Square. Its interactive galleries deal with how words are learned, where English words come from, the languages of the world, poetry, humour and the spoken word, and visitors speak or sign to take part.