Washington D.C. Discovery Guide

No other American city puts this much in walking distance for free. The Smithsonian museums and the National Gallery of Art charge nothing, the monuments on the Mall are open at all hours, and the Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court are within a mile of each other.

The friction is the season. Washington was built on low ground beside a tidal river and July and August are genuinely oppressive — high nineties with humidity to match — while the last week of March and the first of April bring the cherry blossom and the largest crowds of the year to the same small basin.

Come in late April, May, September or October, when the weather is comfortable and the school groups have gone. Whenever you come, do the Mall early: the monuments are at their best before nine, and the museums are emptiest in the first hour after opening.

If you travel slowly

Pick one museum a day rather than three. The Smithsonian institutions are each large enough to fill a day, and being free means there is no penalty for leaving after an hour and coming back.

If you want to see the essentials

The Mall end to end, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial after dark when they are lit and quiet, and one of the big Smithsonians. Arlington is worth the half-day if the history matters to you.

If you seek local character

Leave the Mall. U Street for music and a half-smoke, Ninth Street for Ethiopian food, Eastern Market on a weekend, and the neighbourhoods east of the Anacostia that almost no visitor reaches.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

Rock Creek Park runs for miles through the middle of the city, and the smaller museums — the Phillips Collection, the Building Museum, the Folger — are better than the queues they do not have.

The city's free museums are funded publicly and are genuinely free, but the institutions around them are not. Paying into the smaller independent museums, and buying in the neighbourhoods rather than only on the Mall, distributes money that otherwise stays in a few blocks.

The cherry trees are fragile. Climbing them, pulling branches down for photographs and standing on the roots compacts ground that a century-old grafted tree does not recover from quickly. There are more than three thousand of them and they are all someone's responsibility.

Washington is a city of about 700,000 residents, most of whom have no vote in Congress — a live political grievance, not a piece of trivia. The licence plates say so deliberately.

Protest is constant here and legal. Working around a demonstration rather than through it is both safer and more courteous.

April, May, September and October are the comfortable months, and the best balance of weather against crowds.

Late March to early April is cherry blossom, which is genuinely spectacular and brings well over a million people to a small basin for about two weeks. Peak bloom shifts each year and is forecast only a couple of weeks ahead, which makes booking around it a gamble.

July and August are hot and very humid, with afternoon thunderstorms. The museums are air-conditioned; the Mall is not, and it is treeless.

Winter is cold, quiet and much cheaper. Snow is occasional and the city handles it poorly, but January and February are the easiest months to see anything without a queue.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Because the headline attractions are free, Washington is cheaper than its reputation for anyone whose budget is mostly lodging. Hotel rates swing hard with the congressional calendar as well as the season.