Washington keeps its greatest art free: eleven Smithsonian museums plus the National Gallery charge nothing at the door. Beyond the Mall sit Gilded Age mansion collections, the U Street corridor that made Duke Ellington, and a working theatre district built on Beaux-Arts bones.
John Russell Pope's 1941 marble rotunda holds the only Leonardo in the Americas — Ginevra de' Benci — alongside four Vermeers and Raphael's Alba Madonna. Open daily 10:00–17:00, admission free, no timed pass. Enter at the 6th Street door to skip the Mall queue.
I.M. Pei's 1978 trapezoid, cut from the same Tennessee marble as the West Building, resolves an awkward site into two triangles. Inside: Rothko's largest public holding, Calder's untitled mobile in the atrium, and a Matisse cut-out tower room. Free.
The 1867 Old Patent Office Building — a Greek Revival block where Lincoln held his second inaugural ball — houses two museums under Foster + Partners' undulating glass Kogod Courtyard roof. Daily 11:30–19:00, free. Kehinde Wiley's Obama portrait hangs upstairs.
Gordon Bunshaft's 1974 concrete cylinder on stilts drew the nickname 'the doughnut on the Mall'. The sunken sculpture garden across Jefferson Drive holds Rodin's Burghers of Calais and Hepworth bronzes, and stays open until dusk after the galleries close at 17:30.
America's first museum of modern art, opened in Duncan Phillips's Dupont Circle townhouse in 1921. Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party anchors it; the Rothko Room seats four canvases in a space the painter himself specified. Tue–Sun, $20 weekends, $16 weekdays.
The mile between Dupont Circle and Observatory Circle lines up some 60 chanceries in Gilded Age mansions: the Indonesian Embassy's Walsh-McLean house, once home to the Hope Diamond's last private owner, and Anderson House, a 1905 Beaux-Arts palace open free to visitors.
A Georgetown estate holding Byzantine and Pre-Columbian collections, the latter in Philip Johnson's 1963 pavilion of nine glass-domed circular rooms around a fountain. Beatrix Farrand's terraced gardens step down the hillside. Museum free; garden $7–12 by season.
Edward Durell Stone's 1971 marble slab on the Potomac runs free performances on the Millennium Stage several evenings a week, no ticket needed. The Grand Foyer's 18 Orrefors crystal chandeliers were a gift from Sweden.
Ed Hamilton's Spirit of Freedom bronze stands over a wall of 209,145 names of United States Colored Troops. The museum opposite, free and open Tue–Sat, traces the regiments through original documents; the site marks the entrance to Black Broadway.
Opened in 1922 for Black audiences barred from downtown houses, the Lincoln hosted Ellington, Cab Calloway and Billie Holiday. Restored in 1994, it still programmes music and film. Ben's Chili Bowl next door has run since 1958 through the 1968 riots.
A 1930s wholesale market hall rebuilt as a food and design hall, ringed by La Cosecha's Latin American market and murals from the Pow! Wow! DC festival. Free to enter; Politics and Prose and independent galleries occupy the surrounding warehouse blocks.
A surviving 19th-century service alley behind Blagden's blocks, now stacked with murals, a hidden coffee bar and the kitchen doors of Shaw's restaurants. The brick carriage houses were once stables; a plaque at Naylor Court records the alley-dwelling communities.