Explore Washington, D.C.

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 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.

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.

Washington National Cathedral is an Episcopal cathedral in northwest Washington, built in Neo-Gothic style modelled on English Gothic of the late 14th century. The foundation stone was laid in 1907 and the building was completed in 1990. Visitors see the nave, chapels, stained glass such as the Space Window, and carved gargoyles and grotesques.

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.

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.

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.

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.