White House

Unlike many sites of similar caliber, the White House feels more uplifting than somber. Maybe that’s because this is, at the end of the day, a home as well as a symbol. The White House stuns visitors with its sense of pomp and circumstance, yet it also charms with little left traces of those who have lived here before, which includes every US president since John Adams. Icon of the American presidency? Yeah. But it’s also someone’s front yard.

The Presidential Palace – as it was once known – has changed a great deal over history. It was not originally white, for example. After the British burned the building in the War of 1812, it was restored and painted. Teddy Roosevelt gave official sanction to the executive mansion’s popular name. Presidents have customized the property over time: Grant put in a personal zoo; FDR, a pool; Truman, a balcony; Bush, a horseshoe-throwing lane; and Clinton, a jogging track. Some residents never leave: it’s said that Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman both sighted Lincoln’s ghost in Abe’s old study.

An overhaul in 1950 gutted almost the entire interior, and Jacqueline Kennedy’s extensive redecoration campaign in the 1960s replaced a previous hodgepodge of knickknacks with her immaculate style.

Getting inside the White House can be tough, but the grounds are occasionally opened for special events such as Tee-ball on the South Lawn and the Easter Egg Roll, held every Easter Monday for kids aged three to six. In lieu of touring the actual White House, visitors can browse exhibits, watch historic reenactments and take a video tour of the White House at the Visitors Center (202-208-1631; www.nps.gov/whho; 1450 Pennsylvania Ave NW; admission free; 7:30am-4pm; metro McPherson Sq) in the Malcolm Baldrige Hall in the Department of Commerce building. It’s obviously not the same as seeing the real deal first-hand, but the center does do its job very well, giving good history sprinkled with great anecdotes on presidential spouses, kids and pets. Betcha didn’t know each president designs their own Oval Office rug?