Washington DC Audio Walking Tour

Highlights

• 
  White House

  John Adams moved into the White House on November 1, 1800, and every American president since has lived and worked here. The building is older than it looks — and younger, in a sense, than you might expect.

• 
  Washington Monument

  Completed in 1884, the Washington Monument was then the tallest stone structure in the world and remains the tallest structure in Washington DC, a limit fixed by law. The monument tells its own history in its stones.

• 
  United States Capitol

  Few buildings on earth are as recognizable, or as contested, as the United States Capitol rising in front of you. The Capitol sits on Jenkins' Hill, which L'Enfant called 'a pedestal waiting for a monument.' The cornerstone was laid by George Washington in 1793, the building was first occupied by Congress in 1800, and — like the White House — it was burned by British forces in 1814.

• Arlington National Cemetery

  Arlington National Cemetery grew around the mansion on the hill above you, the home Robert E. Lee left when Virginia seceded in April 1861. The estate originally belonged to the Custis family.

• Georgetown University

  Bishop John Carroll founded Georgetown University in 1789, the oldest Jesuit and oldest Catholic university in the United States. Georgetown was founded by Bishop John Carroll, a member of one of Maryland's oldest Catholic families.

All 40 stops

• Lincoln Memorial (National Mall West)

  Picture thirty-six Doric columns rising above you at one of America's most powerful memorials.

• Vietnam Veterans Memorial (National Mall West)

  Notice the polished black granite walls descending into the earth here in Washington.

• Korean War Veterans Memorial (National Mall West)

  Picture nineteen steel soldiers striding through juniper bushes in mid-patrol, their ponchos billowing, their eyes watchful and exhausted.

• World War II Memorial (National Mall Center)

  Fifty-six granite pillars ring the oval plaza of the World War Two Memorial, dedicated at the center of the National Mall in 2004.

• Washington Monument (National Mall Center)

  Completed in 1884, the Washington Monument was then the tallest stone structure in the world and remains the tallest structure in Washington DC, a limit…

• Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (Tidal Basin)

  Picture the Stone of Hope emerging from granite here at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the first Mall monument honoring an African American.

• FDR Memorial (Tidal Basin)

  The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial gives you no single statue on a pedestal, but a series of outdoor rooms along the Tidal Basin.

• Jefferson Memorial (Tidal Basin South)

  Picture a white marble rotunda modeled on the Roman Pantheon, open to the air above the Tidal Basin's cherry blossoms.

• White House (Pennsylvania Avenue)

  John Adams moved into the White House on November 1, 1800, and every American president since has lived and worked here.

• The Ellipse (White House South)

  South of the White House grounds, the Ellipse opens as a large oval park crossed by paths.

• Lafayette Square (Pennsylvania Avenue)

  Lafayette Square fills seven acres directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

• Treasury Building (Pennsylvania Avenue)

  Washington's third-oldest Federal building, the Treasury, was completed in 1842, after only the White House and the Capitol.

• National Archives (Pennsylvania Avenue)

  Bronze doors guard the National Archives, the vault of American democracy.

• Ford's Theatre (Downtown)

  On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Ford's Theatre filled for a comedy called Our American Cousin.

• United States Capitol (Capitol Hill)

  Few buildings on earth are as recognizable, or as contested, as the United States Capitol rising in front of you.

• Supreme Court (Capitol Hill)

  Equal Justice Under Law — the inscription on the Supreme Court of the United States sets the standard bluntly.

• Library of Congress (Capitol Hill)

  Beside you rises the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, holding over one hundred seventy million items in four hundred fifty languages.

• Union Station (Capitol Hill North)

  Daniel Burnham modeled Union Station on the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, and it opened in 1907 as the largest train station in the world.

• Eastern Market (Capitol Hill East)

  Since 1873 Eastern Market has traded through fires, recessions and two centuries of a changing city, the oldest continuously operating public market in Washington DC.

• National Museum of African American History and Culture (National Mall)

  Three stacked tiers of bronze lattice announce the National Museum of African American History and Culture as a statement of intent.

• National Museum of American History (National Mall)

  Call it the attic of the nation: the National Museum of American History holds the most eclectic collection of American artifacts on the planet.

• National Museum of Natural History (National Mall)

  Somewhere inside the National Museum of Natural History sits the Hope Diamond, forty-five and a half carats of deep blue boron-infused diamond wrapped in a…

• National Air and Space Museum (National Mall East)

  Nearly nine million people a year come to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the most visited aircraft and spacecraft collection in the world.

• National Gallery of Art (National Mall East)

  Funded by Congress and private donation rather than the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art is one of the greatest art museums in the Western…

• Smithsonian Institution Building (National Mall)

  James Smithson's bequest built this Castle, the Smithsonian Institution Building, whose red sandstone towers have anchored the Mall since 1855.

• Blair House (Pennsylvania Avenue)

  At 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue, Blair-Lee House serves as the official state guesthouse of the United States, a modest white mansion.

• Old Stone House (Georgetown)

  A Pennsylvania cabinetmaker named Christopher Layman built the Old Stone House at 3051 M Street in 1765, the oldest surviving building in Washington DC.

• C&O Canal (Georgetown)

  Work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal began in 1828, the same day construction started on its rival, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

• Georgetown University (Georgetown)

  Bishop John Carroll founded Georgetown University in 1789, the oldest Jesuit and oldest Catholic university in the United States.

• Dupont Circle (Northwest DC)

  Row houses and mansions that once held some of the most powerful people in American history ring Dupont Circle and its marble fountain.

• Embassy Row (Massachusetts Avenue NW)

  More diplomatic missions crowd each mile of Massachusetts Avenue, the stretch known as Embassy Row, than any street in the world.

• Washington National Cathedral (Cathedral Heights)

  Eighty-three years of building, from 1907 to 1990, raised the Washington National Cathedral on the highest point in Washington DC.

• Howard University (Shaw)

  Two years after the Civil War ended, Howard University was founded in 1867, and generations have called it the Mecca of historically Black colleges.

• Logan Circle (Shaw)

  Victorian row houses with bay windows and front stoops ring Logan Circle, one of Pierre L'Enfant's seven original traffic circles.

• National Zoo (Woodley Park)

  Established in 1889 on one hundred sixty-three acres of Rock Creek Park, the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park is one of the oldest zoos in the…

• Arlington National Cemetery (Arlington, Virginia)

  Arlington National Cemetery grew around the mansion on the hill above you, the home Robert E. Lee left when Virginia seceded in April 1861.

• USMC War Memorial (Arlington, Virginia)

  Six bronze Marines raise their flag above you at the United States Marine Corps War Memorial, known worldwide as the Iwo Jima Memorial.

• Frederick Douglass House (Cedar Hill) (Anacostia)

  Frederick Douglass bought Cedar Hill in 1877, the home of the most important African American political figure of the nineteenth century.

• Anacostia (Southeast DC)

  East of the river that shares its name, Anacostia is among the most historically significant and consistently overlooked communities in Washington DC.

• Rock Creek Park / Peirce Mill (Rock Creek Park)

  Isaac Peirce built Peirce Mill in the 1820s, and Rock Creek Park's one thousand seven hundred fifty-four acres of forested valley run past it.

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