Running tour · Washington, DC

Monuments and Memorials

5.9 mi run

Open in Stride Stories

The stories on this route

1. The Lincoln Memorial

   Look at the temple at the end of the Reflecting Pool, with Lincoln seated inside. Architect Henry Bacon modelled it on the Parthenon: a tribute to a defender of democracy, shaped like a temple from democracy's birthplace. The thirty-six columns stand for the states in the Union when Lincoln died.

2. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

   Look for the low black wall cutting into the grass. It starts about eight inches high at the ends and rises to about ten feet where the two arms meet. One arm points at the Lincoln Memorial, the other at the Washington Monument. Look closer, and your own face is reflected among the names.

3. The White House from the Ellipse

   Find the Zero Milestone, the low pink granite post with a compass on top. It's symbolically where highway distances from Washington are measured. In July 1919, the first army convoy to cross the country by motor set off from this spot for San Francisco. A young Lieutenant Colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower went with it.

4. The Washington Monument

   Look about a third of the way up the Washington Monument. See the band where the marble changes shade? That line is a scar from a building site that stalled.

5. Where Garfield was shot

   Look at the National Gallery of Art's West Building. Before it, this was the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, red brick, with a clock tower on the corner.

6. The Capitol and the Statue of Freedom

   Look up at the bronze figure on top of the dome. That's Freedom, about nineteen and a half feet tall. She faces east, so from here you see her back, and the crest of feathers on her helmet.

7. The Smithsonian Castle

   Look at the Castle, red Seneca sandstone with towers of different heights. James Renwick designed it as a "modern" version of a twelfth-century Norman castle. It went up between 1847 and 1855.

8. The Tidal Basin cherry trees

   Look for the large bronze plaque on this bank, at the foot of two cherry trees. They've been here since March 1912.

9. The Jefferson Memorial

   Look across the water at the round, open temple, with its shallow dome on a ring of columns. Architect John Russell Pope echoed Jefferson's own buildings, Monticello and the University of Virginia Rotunda. The statue inside faces north, in a straight line with the White House.

10. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

    Look for the split granite mountain, and the stone standing forward of it. Pass through the gap, and Martin Luther King Jr. emerges from the Stone of Hope, arms folded, gazing across the water. It's the first memorial on the National Mall to an African American.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source