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National Air & Space Museum
Each year, eight million people visit these cavernous halls filled with alighted airplanes and soaring spacecraft (including the Wright Brothers' Flyer , Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis and the Apollo 11 command module). The museum's 23 galleries trace the history of aviation and space exploration through interactive displays and historic artefacts.
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National Archives
Inside this grand neoclassical building (enter from Constitution Ave NW) is a dimly lit rotunda with the three original documents upon which the US government is based: the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Don't expect to linger over the Big Three - guards make you keep moving - but you can study the Magna Carta of 1297 (courtesy of erstwhile presidential candidate H Ross Perot) and other documents at your leisure.
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National Building Museum
Devoted to the architectural arts, this underappreciated museum is appropriately housed in an architectural jewel: the 1887 Old Pension Building. Four stories of ornamented balconies flank the dramatic 316ft-wide atrium. The Corinthian columns, 75ft high, are among the largest in the world. The space has hosted 16 inaugural balls from Grover Cleveland's in 1885 to George W's in 2005.
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National Gallery of Art
This author has fond memories of getting lost amid the National Gallery of Art's exotic treasures as a kid. She'll never forget the way it felt to stand tiny next to Alexander Calder's massive child-like mobile. Made from cutouts of the brightest primary colors and set in a four-story atrium, it generally knocks the breath out of everyone who sees it.
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National Geographic Explorers Hall
This natural science museum at National Geographic Society headquarters can't compete with the Smithsonian's more extensive offerings downtown, but it's worth a stop if you have kids in tow. They'll enjoy its rotating, hands-on exhibits on exploration, adventure and earth sciences. Recent exhibits have included Shackleton's Antarctic-expedition photography and natural history drawings from National Geographic magazine's early years.
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National Museum Of African Art
Devoted to ancient and modern sub-Saharan African art, the peaceful galleries display masks, textiles, ceramics, ritual objects and other examples of the visual traditions of a continent of 900 distinct cultures, and comprise the country's foremost collection of traditional work. Don't miss the eight Hot Spots highlighted at the information desk. We like the small collection of highly accomplished creations from the Kingdom of Benin.
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National Museum Of American Art & National Portrait Gallery
These inseparable Smithsonian museums are looking brilliant these days, thanks to a multi-million-dollar facelift. They share the 19th-century US Patent Office building, a neoclassical quadrangle that hosted Lincoln's second inaugural ball and a Civil War hospital. Walt Whitman based The Wound-Dresser upon his experiences as a volunteer nurse here ('The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand/I sit by the restless all the dark night…').
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National Museum Of American History
This museum houses the greatest collection of Americana on earth. Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet, Kermit the Frog, Alexander Graham Bell's phone, Tommy guns - all the stuff that has made this nation what it is, you'll find right here. There is also the original Star-Spangled Banner housed in a special viewing area.
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National Museum Of Health & Medicine
Forensics junkies love this 'Library of Congress of the dead,' as described by science writer Gina Kolata, which contains both straightforward scientific exhibits and freakish medical oddities. You'll find cannonball-shredded leg bones removed from Civil War soldiers, the bullet that killed Lincoln and fragments of his shattered skull, President Garfield's spinal column, and many other preserved body parts on display.
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National Museum Of Natural History
Welcoming more than nine million guests each year, this is one of the world's most visited museums - and it just keeps getting better with two new exhibits added in the last five years. The excellent Hall of Mammals demonstrates how mammals have evolved by adapting to changing environments, while the sometimes raw and bitter-tasting African Voices captures the dynamism, diversity and influence of Africa's people scattered across the globe.
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National Museum Of The American Indian
One of the newer Smithsonian museums this place tells the story of the American Indian in a format not often employed by mainstream museums, with mixed results. The idea, to use native communities' authentic voices and own interpretations of events to debunk stereotypes, is imaginative but unfortunately comes across as a little dry and too texty to hold the casual sightseer's attention for very long.
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National Museum Of Women In The Arts
The only American museum devoted exclusively to women's artwork resides in this magnificent Renaissance-revival mansion. Its colletion of 2600 works by almost 700 female artists from 28 countries moves from Renaissance artists like Lavinia Fontana to 20th-century works by Kahlo, O'Keeffe and Frankenthaler. The permanent collection is largely paintings (mostly portraits at that), but the special collections and rotating exhibits are exceptional.
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National Postal Museum
The newest Smithsonian museum, in the National Capitol Post Office Building, features kid-friendly exhibits on postal history from the Pony Express to modern times. There are antique mail planes, beautiful old stamps, Cliff Clavin's uniform (from the sitcom Cheers) and great exhibits of old letters (from soldiers, pioneers and others).
Philatelists should head to the shop for current US stamps and poster-size blow-ups of unique historical stamps.
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Navy Memorial & Naval Heritage Center
The circular plaza is bordered by masts sporting semaphore flags; on its western side a sculpted seaman - the Lone Sailor - hunches down in his peacoat as a tribute to sea service. The Naval Heritage Center is on the same grounds and displays artifacts and ship models, and has a meditation room and a Navy Memorial Log. At daily, its theater screens the gung-ho At Sea , which dramatically depicts battle-group maneuvers.
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Organization Of American States & Art Museum Of The Americas
A sort of forerunner to the UN, the OAS is an international organization founded in 1890 to promote cooperation among North and South American nations. Its main building at 17th St and Constitution Ave is a marble palazzo surrounded by the sculpture-studded Aztec Gardens. Behind it, the OAS operates the Art Museum of the Americas, featuring an incredible collection of art that spans the 20th century and the Western Hemisphere.
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Phillips Collection
Founded in 1921, DC's oldest museum of modern art is famed for its extensive collection of impressionist and postimpressionist pieces. Monet, Degas, Whistler, van Gogh and Klee are all represented, with Renoir's panoramic Luncheon of the Boating Party crowning its holdings. Special exhibits are also a big draw. Thursdays the gallery hosts Artful Evenings, featuring live jazz and free appetizers.
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Pope John Paul II Cultural Center
This impressive modern building is an unexpected setting for an interactive museum of the Catholic Church. Five galleries explore the history of the Church, personal faith, and its relation to science, community and social service. The excellent Gallery of Imagination allows visitors to participate in a carillon-ringing ensemble or design an electronic stained-glass window.
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Renwick Gallery
The Smithsonian's Renwick invites you up the stairs of its regal 1859 mansion, then startles you with wild pieces of artistic whimsy. This is the national crafts museum, but 'crafts' doesn't really describe these wonderfully creative artworks. The many playful pieces make it a wonderful place to introduce kids to art. Grownups like the Grand Salon and Octagon Room, recently restored in the grand gilded-age styles of the 1870s and 1880s.
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Sewall-Belmont House
This historic home is a feminist landmark: It has been the home base of the National Woman's Party since 1929, and for 43 years it was the residence of the party's legendary founder, suffragette Alice Paul. Paul spearheaded efforts to gain the vote for women - enshrined in the 19th Amendment - and wrote the Equal Rights Amendment. Docents show you historical exhibits, portraits, sculpture and a library celebrating feminist heroines.
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Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum
In 1792 Edward Stabler opened his apothecary - a family business that would operate for 141 years. In 1933 the Depression forced the shop to close; the doors were simply locked, shutting history inside. Over 8000 medical objects and fixtures remained in place. Now it's a museum, its shelves lined with 900 beautiful hand-blown apothecary bottles and strange old items like Martha Washington's Scouring Compound.
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Textile Museum
This gem is the country's only textile museum and as unappreciated as the art itself. In two historic mansions, its cool, dimly lit galleries hold exquisite fabrics and carpets dating from 3000 BC to the present. Accompanying wall commentary explains how the textiles mirror values of the societies that made them. Founded in 1925, its collection includes rare kimonos, pre-Columbian weaving, American quilts and Ottoman embroidery.
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Tudor Place
This 1816 neoclassical mansion was owned by tobacco merchant Thomas Peter and his wife Martha Custis Peter, granddaughter of Martha Washington. The urban estate stayed in the prominent Peter family until it opened to the public in 1984 and so preserves pieces of the family's history as well as the country's. Today it functions as a small museum featuring furnishings and artwork from Mt Vernon. Its five acres are beautifully landscaped.
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The somber, soaring Holocaust Museum is unlike any other DC museum. In remembering the millions murdered by the Nazis, it is brutal, direct and impassioned. Its exhibits leave many visitors in tears and few unmoved. James Ingo Freed designed the extraordinary building in 1993 and its stark facade and steel-and-glass interior echo the death camps themselves.
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Us Naval Observatory
The US Naval Observatory was created in the 1800s 'to determine the positions and motions of celestial objects, provide astronomical data, measure the Earth's rotation, and maintain the Master Clock for the US.' DC's light pollution prevents important observational work these days, but its cesium-beam atomic clock still sets all standard time in the US. Tours let you peek through telescopes, yak with astronomers and learn about the Master Clock.
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Us Patent & Trademark Office Museum
This nearly new museum tells the history of the United States patent. The story begins in 1917 in Memphis, TN., where wholesale grocer Clarence Saunders invented and patented what he called 'Self-Servicing' stores, now commonly known as the supermarket. He went from rags to riches and almost back to rags again, but you'll have to visit the museum to get the rest of the story, along with displays depicting other famous and influential patents.
