Washington
Extracts of the guide of voyage Ulysses Washington, D.C., by Lorette Pierson
Few cities throughout the world and the history had this chance to be intended to be used as receptacle for the capacity of a nation, even with the destiny of an empire. And even less had the privilege to preserve this vocation other than very other. However, precisely, Washington never served of other intentions but that being the capital of the United States of America.
Geographical overflight
The town of Washington, D.C. is located on Potomac, where the Anacostia river joined it, that is to say to some 120 km of its mouth on bay of Chesapeake and to 220 km of the opening on the ocean. The great area of the capital can conveniently be divided into three sectors: the coastal plain, the plate of Piedmont and the Appalachian Mountains.

Attractions

Capitol Hill
Capitole, which throne at the top of Jenkins Hill, constitutes one of the most visible bench marks of Washington. The architect Pierre Charles the Child, to which was entrusted the plans of Washington, decided to make of Jenkins Hill, modest 27 height m headland, the point of convergence of all the new city.

Washington

The largest library of the world, is Library of Congress, cabin in a building whose frontage points out the Opera of Paris curiously. Thomas Jefferson had one day declared that a member of the Congress was to always be in measurement to consult reference works on any subject. Of which act.

White marble the neo-classic building of Vermont which resembles a Roman temple is the Supreme Court, the supreme Court of the United States. Frame in 1935, this imposing building wants to be undoubtedly the symbol of the great power of highest the Court of Justice of the country.

Downtown area
The National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American Art is presented as a monument of Greek inspiration in a city where Roman architecture is posted sometimes with excess.

Surroundings of the White House
Each year, more than one million and half of people is had a presentiment of with the doors of White house, celebrates it White House become a symbol of the United States. The French architect Pierre Charles the Child had, in the plans of the city which it had drawn for Washington, considered the construction of an imposing palate intended to accomodate the American presidents.

In the beginning intended to present works of art American, Corcoran Gallery of Art, one of the largest museums of Washington which does not form part of Smithsonian Institute, also have a very beautiful European collection.

Mall
The National Air and Space Museum invites the visitors, impassioned or not aeronautics, with living a single and unforgettable experiment. This museum exposes an impressive collection of planes.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden was baptized in the honor of Joseph H. Hirshhorn (1899-1981), an American collector which bequeathed to the United States of America more than 12 000 works coming from its personal collection.

The National Museum of African Art presents arts and the ages of Africa at the south of the Sahara. It is besides the only museum of the United States of America to be exclusively devoted to these cultures resulting from sub-Saharan regions.

InArthur Mr. Sackler Gallery, the visitors will be able to plunge themselves in the evolution of the art of Asia and the Middle East, of Antiquity at our days. The museum was created thanks to a gift of more than 1 000 remarkable works of Arthur Mr. Sackler (1913-1987).

Very beautiful traditional building of Renaissance style florentine builds out of marble and out of granite, Freer Gallery of Art opened its doors with the public in 1923. The Freer gallery is the work of Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), one impassioned of Asian art and American art of its time.

US Holocaust Memorial Museum returns vibrating and moving homage to the six million Jews, like with the people gypsy, the handicapped people, homosexual, the witnesses of Jéhovah, the communist political prisoners and the Soviet prisoners of war, exterminated in the madness of the Nazi Germany.

One of the most famous images of Washington is undoubtedly the open rotunda of Jefferson Memorial, which is surrounded of ionic columns and is surmounted by a dome. These columns protect a statue from Jefferson (1743-1826), the third American president.

Washington Monument became one of the most recognized symbols of Washington. It will have been necessary nearly 40 years to complete this white marble obelisk perched on a small hill vis-a-vis in the White House, in full medium of this majestic esplanade which form Mall.

Inspired of the Greek Parthenon, Lincoln Memorial plays a key part in the architectural composition of Washington. Drawing up in an Olympian way at the western end of Mall, this monument faces Capitole.

Revive the great moments of the American history by the evolution of technology and the impact of science on the company with the National Museum of American History. The contents and the diversity of the exposures are quite simply confusing.

The National Museum of Natural History is the third museum of the Smithsonian institute to be built. The imperial aspect of the neo-classic building of style sied perfectly to an imposing collection of more than 121 million specimens.

The National Gallery of Art shelters one of the most beautiful collections in the world of pictorial and sculptural masterpieces dating from the Middle Ages until the modern time. This art gallery is made up of two buildings: West Building and East Building.

Dupont Circle
Phillips Collection was the first American museum devoted to the modern art to open its doors, that is to say in 1921, and this, in the house of a collector impassioned, Duncan Phillips (1886-1966), eight years before the opening of the museum of modern art of New York.

Foggy Bottom
The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in spite of criticisms addressed to the place of the architecture of the building and of his site, without question largely contributed to give in Washington a cultural life of international reputation.

Arlington
You will have to cross the Potomac river byArlington Memorial Bridge to return to you in famous Arlington National Cemetery, where the American heroes on a property are buried which belonged formerly to the families Custis and Lee.