Tour of the US Capitol in Washington DC
The United States Capitol, located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, DC is the seat of the United States Congress and an iconic symbol of US Government. Tours of the building are available for visitors.
The US Capitol. The white-domed building on the hill. Home to the ‘leaders of the free world’. Backdrop to every TV news cross from ‘our Washington correspondent.’ Target of alien destruction in many Hollywood movies. And location for some of the action in my latest TV show obsession, the US series of House of Cards.
It is such an iconic image in the Washington landscape, instantly recognizable to most of us. However, it is even more fascinating up close.
The Capitol Visitor Center is open to visitors from 8:30am to 4:30pm from Monday to Saturday and tours of the building are held from 8:50am to 3:20pm.
The tours are free, but advance bookings are required at the US Capitol website, and the prime time slots fill up quickly, so you’re best to book well in advance of your visit dates. (US residents can also book through their Representatives’ or Senators’ offices.) Some same-day passes are available at a ‘walk-up’ line at the Visitor Center. I wouldn’t rely on that though, as apparently the queues for these can be quite long.
Like many locations in Washington DC, there is a rigorous airport-style security process to clear prior to entering the Visitor Center. The US Capitol website recommends allowing 45 minutes prior to the tour start time for this. As our tour was booked for 3.20pm, we arrived on ‘the hill’ at 2.30pm, only to walk straight through security and right up to the information desk to collect our tickets. We were able to swap our tickets for a 2.40pm tour, which cut down our hanging around time. However, if you do have time to spare prior to a tour, there is an Exhibition Hall on the lower level with historic documents, artifacts, models, films, and interactive stations that tell the story of the US Capitol and the Congress.
The Capitol tour is really well organised. It starts with a 13-minute orientation film which gives an overview of how the US came together as a nation to govern itself independently, and introduces the theme of ‘E pluribus unum’ (out of many, one).
As we exited the theater, we were allocated a ‘lane’ and given a headset which was tuned to the audio feed of our lane’s guide, as several tours were being conducted simultaneously, and the noise level, especially in the Rotunda, was quite high.
Our guide, Walt was fabulous. He was very knowledgeable about the Capitol, and offered great stories about all the features.
The tour itself takes about 45 minutes and includes stops in the Crypt, the National Statuary Hall and the Rotunda (the inside of the dome).
The National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol contains statues donated by individual states to honor notable people from that state’s history. Each state is allowed to contribute two statues at any time, so there are 100 in total, with 50 of them in the National Statuary Hall and the remainder distributed throughout the Capitol, mainly in the Hall of Columns, the connecting corridors of the House and Senate wings, and the Visitor Center.
Some of the statues are instantly recognizable, some are a bit more obscure. Some of my favourites were: Helen Keller (Alabama), Dwight D Eisenhower (Kansas), Ronald W Reagan (California), George Washington (Virginia) and Brigham Young (Utah).
There is also a particularly striking statue (which was commissioned by Congress and unveiled just last year) in the National Statuary Hall of the African-American civil rights leader, Rosa Parks. She came to national attention in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat in a bus to a white passenger, leading to her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama’s segregation laws. The statue captures her stoic determination to stand her ground….or in this case, keep her seat.
The Rotunda is a large, domed, circular room right in the center of the US Capitol building. It is topped by the Dome which is the most striking feature of the US Capitol exterior.
The oculus of the Dome contains the fresco painting ‘The Apotheosis of Washington‘, by Italian artist Constantino Brumidi. It is painted on a huge scale, with the figures over 3 metres (15 feet) in height. On a banner are once again the words, E pluribus unum.
Around the wall of the Rotunda immediately below the windows is a frescoed frieze illustrating significant events in American history, also sketched and started by Brumidi, but completed after his death in 1880 by Filippo Costaggini.
Well, almost completed… When Costaggini got to the end of the design in 1889, there was a gap of over 9 metres (31 feet) remaining. Somewhere along the way, there had been a miscalculation. That gap remained right up until 1953, when it was completed by artist, Allyn Cox.
The day we visited, scaffolding and floor covering had already been fitted in the Rotunda in readiness for the installation of safety netting as part of the ongoing Dome restoration project. The Rotunda was closed during the period April 12 to April 28, 2014 to allow that installation. We were lucky to be there just days prior. The netting is to ensure safety of visitors, and will allow the Rotunda to be accessible for the duration of the project.
At the conclusion of the tour, Walt told us that if we wanted to go into either the Senate or the House of Congress galleries we would need to look up our Congressman/woman or Senator, go to their offices and obtain a pass…unless we were international visitors, in which case we could just go to the Appointments Desk in the Visitor Center and obtain passes.
Bonus. We hot-footed it to the desk and obtained passes for the House. More security to clear. Multiple times, in fact. And a bit of queuing…but eventually we wound our way through the corridors of the Capitol and into the House of Congress public gallery.
The debate going on in the House was about transparency in the accounting of Government loans, or more accurately, from the record of proceedings: “4:02:59 P.M. H.R. 1872 Considered under the provisions of rule H. Res. 539. H.R. 1872 — “To amend the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to increase transparency in Federal budgeting, and for other purposes.”
Hardly riveting stuff, but it was interesting to see inside the House, and watch Congress at work.
Like other places I’ve seen many times over the years on TV or in film before actually seeing them in real life, there was somewhat of a sense of déjà vu in our visit to The Capitol, but it was definitely a highlight to be able to walk the corridors, to see the inside of the Rotunda, and to see the statues in the Statuary Hall up close. To be able to watch Congress in action really topped it off.
Have you been inside the US Capitol?
Want to save this post to refer to later? Use the image below to pin it to Pinterest!
This post is linked to:
