Explore Washington, D.C.

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the west side of the Tidal Basin honors the 32nd president of the United States. Designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and dedicated in 1997, it traces his four terms in office through four open-air rooms of granite walls, waterfalls, carved quotations and bronze sculptures.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the Smithsonian's museum of modern and contemporary art on the National Mall, opened in 1974 around the collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. Gordon Bunshaft designed the raised concrete cylinder with a fountain in its inner courtyard; a sunken sculpture garden lies across Jefferson Drive.

The National Gallery of Art is an art museum on the National Mall, established by Congress in 1937 with the collection and funds of Andrew W. Mellon. John Russell Pope's neoclassical West Building shows European and American art from the Middle Ages on, I. M. Pei's East Building of 1978 holds modern art, and a sculpture garden lies beside them.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial honours the third US president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Built in 1939–1943 on the south shore of the Tidal Basin, the domed, colonnaded rotunda by John Russell Pope draws on the Pantheon in Rome. Inside stands a bronze statue of Jefferson, added in 1947, surrounded by passages from his writings.

The International Spy Museum is a non-profit museum about the history and practice of espionage and intelligence work. It opened in 2002 in Penn Quarter and moved in 2019 to a new building by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners at L'Enfant Plaza. Its galleries show spy equipment, real cases and tradecraft from ancient times to the present, with interactive stations.

The National Air and Space Museum is the Smithsonian's museum of flight and space exploration on the National Mall, founded in 1946 and housed in a building opened in 1976. Its galleries show original aircraft and spacecraft, among them the 1903 Wright Flyer, Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and the Apollo 11 command module Columbia.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts stands on the east bank of the Potomac and opened in 1971 as the national cultural centre and a living memorial to President Kennedy. Edward Durell Stone designed the long marble building with its Concert Hall, Opera House and Eisenhower Theater; the REACH pavilions by Steven Holl were added in 2019.

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 National Museum of the American Indian is the Smithsonian museum devoted to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, opened in 2004 at Fourth Street and Independence Avenue on the National Mall. Its curving building, clad in golden Kasota limestone, was designed by Douglas Cardinal. Exhibitions present objects, art and histories from across the hemisphere.

The Phillips Collection is an art museum near Dupont Circle, opened in 1921 by Duncan and Marjorie Phillips in his family's 1897 Georgian Revival house, later extended by two additions. The collection centers on Impressionist and modern art, including Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party and a room of paintings by Mark Rothko.

The Museum of the Bible is a museum two blocks south of the National Mall, opened in 2017 by a nonprofit founded by the Green family. It occupies a brick refrigerated warehouse of 1923, extended with two new floors under a glass roof. Its exhibitions cover the history, narrative and impact of the Bible, with manuscripts, printed Bibles and archaeological objects.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

Dumbarton Oaks is a historic estate in Georgetown that Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss gave to Harvard University in 1940, now a research institute. Visitors see the terraced garden designed by Beatrix Farrand and a museum of Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, part of it in a 1963 pavilion by Philip Johnson.

Nationals Park is the baseball stadium of Major League Baseball's Washington Nationals, on the Anacostia River in the Navy Yard neighbourhood. Designed by HOK Sport with Devrouax & Purnell, it opened in 2008 and seats about 41,000. From the upper decks on the first-base side you can see the Capitol and the Washington Monument.