History
Washington and Monticello, the founders at home
Washington was built as a capital from scratch, a planned city of monuments to the ideals of a new republic. A few hours south, at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's hilltop house shows one of those founders at home, with all his genius and all his contradictions.
By Walter Pellow2 November 20264 min read
When the United States chose a permanent capital in 1790, it did not pick one of its existing cities. Instead, it chose a site on the Potomac River, between Maryland and Virginia, and set out to build a new city there, designed for the purpose. George Washington chose the location, and a French-born engineer, Pierre Charles L'Enfant, drew up the plan: broad avenues radiating from the Capitol and the President's House across a grid of streets, with open spaces and grand vistas. It took more than a century to fill out, but the plan still shapes the city.
The Mall
The heart of Washington is the National Mall, a long expanse of lawn running west from the Capitol, the domed home of Congress, to the Lincoln Memorial by the river. Along it stand the monuments and museums that make up the city's greatest sights.
The Washington Monument, a plain marble obelisk, rises in the middle, for a time the tallest structure in the world when it was completed in the 1880s. At the western end, the Lincoln Memorial, a Greek temple with a great seated statue of Abraham Lincoln, looks out over the Reflecting Pool; it was from its steps that Martin Luther King Jr gave his I Have a Dream speech in 1963. Around the Tidal Basin stand the memorials to Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dr King, and the basin is ringed with cherry trees, a gift from Japan in 1912, which blossom spectacularly in early spring.
Along both sides of the Mall stand the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, founded with a bequest from an English scientist, James Smithson, who never visited America. They cover everything from air and space to natural history and American history, and most of them are free.
Arlington and Alexandria
Across the Potomac lies Arlington National Cemetery, on the hillside estate that once belonged to the family of Robert E. Lee. Its rows of white headstones stretch across the hills, and it includes the grave of President John F. Kennedy, with its eternal flame, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the changing of the guard is performed with great ceremony.
A little downstream, Old Town Alexandria is a colonial port town of brick houses and cobbled streets, older than Washington itself, where George Washington had his town house and worshipped at Christ Church.
One of those founders at home, with all his genius and all his contradictions.
Monticello
About two and a half hours south-west of Washington, near the town of Charlottesville in the Virginia hills, stands Monticello, the house that Thomas Jefferson designed and redesigned for most of his adult life. Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, and Monticello reflects his tastes and his restless curiosity: a red-brick house with a white dome and portico, inspired by the classical architecture he admired in Europe, filled with books, scientific instruments and gadgets of his own invention, surrounded by gardens where he experimented with plants from all over the world.
It also reflects the great contradiction of his life. Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, yet he owned more than six hundred enslaved people during his lifetime, and Monticello was built and run by their labour. In recent years, the house has done much to tell their stories, including that of Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman with whom Jefferson is now widely accepted to have had several children.
In Charlottesville, Jefferson also founded the University of Virginia, and its central Lawn, with the domed Rotunda and its rows of pavilions, is one of the finest pieces of American architecture. Monticello and the university together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The tours
Just You's America's Historic Trail with New York Add-on, eleven nights, for solo travellers, starts in Washington DC, with Arlington and Old Town Alexandria, then travels to Charlottesville and Monticello, Richmond, Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown, Lancaster County and Philadelphia, and ends in New York.
Travelsphere's America's Historic East with New York Extension, twelve nights, visits Washington DC, Richmond, Jamestown, Charlottesville, Gettysburg, Philadelphia and New York.
Spring, when the cherry blossom is out around the Tidal Basin, usually in late March or early April, and autumn, when the Virginia hills turn red and gold, are the best times to visit. Washington summers are hot and humid, but the museums are air-conditioned.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
