Best Things to Do in Washington DC

Washington rewards a plan. The big sights are free but spread out, and the best moments often come at the edges of the day, when the memorials are lit and the crowds have gone.

1. The Lincoln Memorial. Climb the steps, read the Gettysburg Address carved on the wall, then turn round for the view down the Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument. Our National Mall guide links it to the other memorials.
2. The memorials at night. Lincoln, the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial are open around the clock and at their most moving after dark. Take a bike-share or join a night tour.
3. The National Museum of African American History and Culture. Start at the bottom, in the galleries on slavery, and work your way up through three centuries. Timed passes are free but essential.
4. The National Air and Space Museum. The Wright Flyer, the Apollo 11 command module and the Spirit of St. Louis, in a building that has spent years being renovated gallery by gallery. Our Smithsonian guide compares it with the others.
5. The US Capitol. A free guided tour takes you under the dome into the Rotunda and Statuary Hall. Book online.
6. The Library of Congress. The Thomas Jefferson Building, behind the Capitol, has the most extravagant interior in the city: marble, mosaics and a domed reading room seen from a gallery above. Entry is free with a timed pass booked online, and a tunnel links it to the Capitol Visitor Center, so it pairs naturally with the Capitol tour.
7. The National Gallery of Art. Free, and home to the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas, the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci. The East Building holds the modern art.
8. Arlington National Cemetery. Across the river in Virginia, on the Blue Line two stops past Foggy Bottom. Watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and visit John F. Kennedy's grave with its eternal flame.
9. Georgetown. Federal-era brick houses, the C&O Canal towpath and the riverfront. Walk up the steep Exorcist steps if you know the film.
10. Eastern Market and Capitol Hill. A covered market hall with weekend stalls outside, among streets of painted rowhouses. Weekend mornings are best.
11. The Wharf. The redeveloped waterfront on the Washington Channel, with restaurants, music venues and the old Maine Avenue Fish Market, which has sold seafood here since the nineteenth century.
12. A baseball game. The Nationals play at Nationals Park in Navy Yard from spring to early autumn, and cheap seats are easy to find for most games.

What we'd skip: waiting outside the White House fence for a better photo (the view from Lafayette Square is as close as you'll get, and it's the same picture everyone takes), and the hop-on hop-off buses, which get stuck in the same traffic as everyone else.