Washington DC in 3 days

United States Capitol Building (the seat of the U.S. Congress (the Senate in the north wing and the House of Representatives in the south wing) on the eastern end of the National Mall on Capitol Hill; the most recognizable building in American government): the history (the Capitol cornerstone was laid by President George Washington on September 18, 1793; the original sandstone Capitol (designed by William Thornton) was first occupied by Congress in 1800 (the year the federal government moved from Philadelphia to Washington); the British burning of Washington in 1814 (the War of 1812) burned the Capitol on August 24, 1814 — the only time since 1814 that a foreign power has occupied Washington D.C. (until the January 6, 2021 breach); the current cast-iron dome (1855-1868 — the dome was completed during the Civil War; President Lincoln refused to halt construction (the construction of the dome continued throughout the war as a symbol that the Union would continue)): the dome was modelled on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and is the largest cast-iron dome in the world at 87.6 m; the Statue of Freedom (5.9 m bronze statue on the dome apex — facing east away from the Mall: the Capitol faces east (the direction of the rising sun), not west toward the Mall (the visual impact of the dome from the Mall is the view of the back of the building)); the Capitol Rotunda (the interior under the dome: the Apotheosis of Washington ceiling fresco (1865, by Constantino Brumidi) with George Washington ascending to the heavens surrounded by the 13 original states and 6 allegorical figures representing War, Science, Marine, Commerce, Mechanics and Agriculture — the most elaborate ceiling painting in U.S. government buildings).

Library of Congress (the world's largest library — 173 million items in 470 languages; the national library of the United States, housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill: the Thomas Jefferson Building (1897), the John Adams Building (1939) and the James Madison Memorial Building (1980)): the Thomas Jefferson Building (the main building of the Library of Congress — the most ornate interior in Washington D.C.: the Great Hall (the entrance rotunda with the richly painted and gilded ceiling, the marble columns, the sculpted figures and the Italian Renaissance-style decorative programme of 23 American craftsmen and 50 Italian craftsmen (1888-1897)); the Main Reading Room (the octagonal domed reading room 49 m across and 50 m high — one of the most beautiful working libraries in the world; the eight marble columns, the bronze railings, the painted allegorical figures representing the fields of human knowledge (Religion, Commerce, History, Art, Philosophy, Poetry, Law, Science), the dome with the lantern; the reading room is visible from the public gallery but readers with a Library of Congress card have access to the floor below); the most important items (the Gutenberg Bible (c.1450-1455 — one of three perfect vellum copies; the Library of Congress Gutenberg Bible is the most important book in the collection); the "Declaration of Independence" rough draft with Thomas Jefferson's corrections and John Adams' and Benjamin Franklin's annotations; the first map to use the name "America" (the Waldseemüller map, 1507 — the document for which Congress paid $10 million to Germany in 2003)).

National Air and Space Museum (the Smithsonian museum on the south side of the Mall, directly south of the Capitol; 8 million annual visitors — the most visited museum in the United States; free admission; 60,000+ objects in the collection): the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia (the actual spacecraft that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the Moon and back on the Apollo 11 mission (July 16-24, 1969 — the first manned lunar landing); the command module is the cone-shaped re-entry capsule (the only part of the spacecraft that returned to Earth — the Service Module and the Lunar Module remained in space); the scorched ablative heat shield (the charred surface of the Apollo 11 capsule from the 11,000°C re-entry temperature); the most visited object in the Smithsonian Institution; touchable Moon rock (the samples of lunar basalt brought back by Apollo 17 (1972), available for visitors to touch — one of the few places in the world where the public can touch Moon rock); the Wright Flyer (the "Flyer" (also called the "Kitty Hawk Flyer") — the actual aircraft in which the Wright Brothers made the first sustained powered flight in history on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; the 4 flights that day (the longest: 59 seconds, 260 m at 10.9 km/h by Orville Wright at 12 seconds, 36.5 m in the first flight); the Flyer hangs from the ceiling of the gallery directly above the 1st floor floor area; the Spirit of St. Louis (the Ryan NYP monoplane in which Charles Lindbergh completed the first non-stop solo transatlantic flight (May 20-21, 1927: New York to Paris, 5,810 km, 33.5 hours); the actual aircraft is displayed in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall).

Georgetown (the historic neighbourhood on the Potomac River in the northwest quadrant of Washington D.C. — predating the District of Columbia by 50 years (Georgetown was established as a Maryland port town in 1751; the District of Columbia was established in 1790); the most architecturally intact 18th and 19th-century neighbourhood in the city): the history (Georgetown was the main port on the upper Potomac River (above the tidal falls that prevented large vessels from reaching further inland): the tobacco trade (18th century), the flour milling industry (19th century), the C&O Canal (the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, 296 km from Georgetown to Cumberland, Maryland; construction 1828-1850; the canal route beside the Potomac that competed (and lost) against the B&O Railroad opened the same year; the canal towpath is now the most popular running and cycling path in D.C.)); the streets (M Street and Wisconsin Avenue — the main commercial streets of Georgetown; the Federal-style rowhouses (the 18th-century brick townhouses with the fanlight windows, the wooden shutters and the stoops; the most intact concentration of pre-Civil War urban architecture in Washington D.C.); the Georgetown University (1789 — the oldest Jesuit university in the United States, on the hill above the Potomac; the Healy Hall clock tower (1879) — the most photographed building on the Georgetown campus); the waterfront (the Georgetown waterfront park on the Potomac River — the C&O Canal locks, the boathouses and the view across the Potomac to Virginia; the most pleasant evening waterfront in Washington D.C.).

National Archives and Records Administration (the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom — the exhibition hall in the main National Archives building on Constitution Avenue NW containing the three founding documents of the United States government): the Declaration of Independence (the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) — the 56-signature document declaring the separation of the 13 American colonies from Great Britain, drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson (age 33) with revisions by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin; the original parchment (the engrossed copy on vellum — the formal large-format version signed by the delegates) is housed in a nitrogen-filled titanium and aluminium case with bulletproof UV-filtering glass (lowered nightly into a vault 6 m underground); the fading of the text (the Declaration text is extremely difficult to read on the original document — the ink has faded significantly from both age and 35 years of public display under gas lights in the late 19th century; the illuminated display allows the text to be read with difficulty); the Constitution of the United States (the 4-page parchment document establishing the framework of the U.S. federal government, signed September 17, 1787 by 39 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia; the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791) — displayed alongside the Constitution in the Rotunda; the Magna Carta (the National Archives holds one of the four surviving original 1297 Magna Carta copies — displayed on loan rotation in the Public Vaults gallery adjacent to the Rotunda).

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (the national museum of the Holocaust in the United States — located on Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, one block south of the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial; 2.5 million visitors annually; free admission): the Permanent Exhibition (the three-floor permanent exhibition "The Holocaust" — the most comprehensive Holocaust museum in the United States: the exhibition covers the rise of Nazi Germany (1933-1939), the implementation of the "Final Solution" (1942-1945), the experience of the victims (the individual stories of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators), and the liberation and aftermath; the exhibition design (the exhibition is designed as a sequential narrative (visitors ascend by elevator to the 4th floor and walk down through the exhibition): the "Concentration Camp" boxcar (an actual Deutsche Reichsbahn wooden cattle car used to transport Jews to the extermination camps (one of the most common types of transport vehicle); the shoes (the large pile of shoes from Majdanek concentration camp — 40,000 shoes of the Jewish victims; the most emotionally powerful single display in the museum); the Hall of Remembrance (the hexagonal memorial hall at the end of the permanent exhibition: the eternal flame of the Holocaust memorial, the hexagonal form symbolizing the Star of David, the inscription "First they came for the socialists...").

National Portrait Gallery (the Smithsonian Institution museum in the Old Patent Office Building (1836-1867) at 8th and F Streets NW — the most architecturally magnificent Smithsonian building interior (the Greek Revival former Patent Office Building that Walt Whitman called "the noblest of Washington's buildings"); free admission): the "America's Presidents" gallery (the most visited gallery in the Portrait Gallery — the collection of official presidential portraits from George Washington to the present; the famous portraits: the "Lansdowne Portrait" of George Washington (Gilbert Stuart, 1796 — the most reproduced presidential portrait in American history, the basis of the face on the $1 bill and the back of the quarter); the Barack Obama portrait (Kehinde Wiley, 2018 — the most discussed presidential portrait in recent decades: the subject seated against a background of flowers (chrysanthemums, jasmine and African blue lilies) rather than the traditional landscape or architectural setting); the Amy Sherald portrait of Michelle Obama (2018 — displayed alongside the Barack Obama portrait): the Kogod Courtyard (the roofed courtyard designed by Norman Foster (2007) — the glass and steel canopy over the central courtyard of the Old Patent Office Building: one of the most beautiful contemporary architectural interventions in Washington D.C.'s historic buildings; the courtyard is the most pleasant place to sit and rest in any Smithsonian museum).

Washington D.C. evening food and culture district (Penn Quarter and the 14th Street NW corridor — the most concentrated restaurant and bar district in the city): Penn Quarter (the neighbourhood between the National Portrait Gallery (8th Street) and the White House (15th Street) on the north side of the Mall — the most rapidly transformed neighbourhood in Washington D.C. from 1990 to present (from a commercial warehouse district to the city's primary high-end restaurant corridor in under 20 years); the food scene (the Penn Quarter-Capitol Hill-14th Street restaurant corridor is the most culinarily diverse in Washington D.C.: the Ethiopian cuisine (Washington D.C. has the largest Ethiopian diaspora community in North America — the "Little Ethiopia" neighbourhood on 9th Street NW is the most concentrated Ethiopian restaurant district in the world outside Addis Ababa); the federal city food culture (the Washington D.C. restaurant scene is shaped by the legislative calendar: the best-attended restaurants are those within walking distance of the offices of the Congressional staffers and the lobbying firms of K Street; the most politically significant dining room in Washington D.C. is the Old Ebbitt Grill (15th Street NW, founded 1856 — the oldest saloon and restaurant in Washington D.C.) where politicians, journalists and lobbyists have dined together since the Grant administration); the theatre district (the Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Harman Center for the Arts (7th Street NW) and the Warner Theatre (13th Street NW) and the Kennedy Center (New Hampshire Avenue NW, on the Potomac) form the main performance venues of the federal capital).