Booking Ahead

What needs a pass

The good news first. The Smithsonian museums, the National Gallery of Art, the memorials, the Mall and the Tidal Basin cost nothing and, most of the time, need no reservation at all. A visit to Washington can be planned almost entirely on the day.

The exceptions are a short list of places with limited space: the White House, the top of the Washington Monument, the Library of Congress, the Holocaust Memorial Museum's Permanent Exhibition and Frederick Douglass's house, with the Capitol and the National Archives as places where booking is optional but saves time. Popular museums, above all the African American History and Culture Museum, sometimes use timed passes in busy seasons. Many of these passes are free and are released through the museums' own sites or through Recreation.gov, the federal booking site, and they go quickly for spring and summer dates. Book them first, then build the rest of the trip around them.

The White House and the Capitol

A White House tour must be arranged through a member of Congress. If you live in the United States, contact your representative or one of your senators well in advance; visitors from other countries should check the current arrangements for international guests. You will be asked for personal details for the security check, and tours can be cancelled at short notice for official events (see the White House).

Capitol tours are free and are led by professional guides through the Crypt, the Rotunda and National Statuary Hall. Reservations are recommended and can be made online; visitors without one are put on the next tour with space, and the tour does not include the Senate and House galleries, which are reached separately with passes from a senator's or representative's office when the chambers are in session. All tours start at the underground Capitol Visitor Center, opened in 2008 beneath the East Front (see the Capitol).

The Washington Monument

Everyone aged two and older needs a ticket to go up the Washington Monument, and supplies are limited. The Park Service recommends reserving online, where tickets carry a small reservation fee; a fresh batch is released each day for dates ahead. Free, same-day, timed tickets are handed out at the window of the Washington Monument Lodge on 15th Street on a first-come, first-served basis, and they usually run out early. If you care about the view, book (see the Washington Monument).

Library, Archives and museums

The Library of Congress requires free timed-entry tickets for the Thomas Jefferson Building. They can be reserved online up to thirty days ahead, and a small number of same-day tickets are released online each morning. The National Archives needs no ticket, but you can reserve a free general-admission ticket or pay a small fee for a timed entry that avoids the longest lines, which build up in spring and summer.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum requires free timed-entry tickets for its Permanent Exhibition only. The African American History and Culture Museum has used timed-entry passes since it opened, with the arrangements changing over time, so check its site for your dates. Frederick Douglass's house at Cedar Hill is shown only on ranger-led tours with limited places, which is the one visit on this site that most rewards booking far ahead (see Cedar Hill).

Ford's Theatre and the smaller sites

Ford's Theatre, where Abraham Lincoln was shot in April 1865, is both a working theater and a historic site. It became a museum in 1932 and was restored and reopened as a theater in 1968; the Park Service runs the theater and the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln died, as Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, and a separate Center for Education and Leadership opened beside the Petersen House in 2012. The spaces are small, so visits use timed tickets, and the theater closes to visitors for rehearsals and matinees. Book ahead for spring and summer, and check whether the day you want has a performance.

Other small places work the same way: a historic house with a narrow staircase, a gallery with a fragile interior, a tower with a small elevator. Where space is tight, expect a timed ticket, and look at the official page before you set out.

When passes are released

Each system has its own rhythm. Some release tickets a set number of days ahead, some release a fresh batch every day, and some keep a small number back for the same day, online or at a window. The busiest weeks, the cherry blossom season in spring, the school trip months and the summer holidays, sell out first, and weekends go faster than weekdays. If a pass is gone, look again the day before and on the morning itself, when unused tickets are sometimes returned, and keep a flexible day in your plans so that a missed booking can move rather than disappear (see when to come).

Security screening

Nearly every federal building, museum and monument interior screens visitors, with bag checks and walk-through detectors, and some limit the size of bags. The Capitol publishes its own list of prohibited items, which is longer than most visitors expect, so read it before you go. Carry as little as you can, allow extra time at each stop, and expect queues at the door in the busy months.

Screening is also why lines form where there is no ticket at all. A free museum with no pass can still keep you outside for a while on a summer weekend. Arriving at opening time is the simplest way around it.

What never needs a ticket

The memorials, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, stand in the open air, and the National Mall and Memorial Parks never close: you can visit at any hour, with rangers on duty for much of the day. Many are at their best early in the morning or after dark, when they are lit and the crowds are gone. The Mall, the Tidal Basin, Lafayette Square and the outside of the White House need nothing but time.

Most Smithsonian museums need no ticket either, and entry to the National Gallery of Art is free. For these, the only planning needed is to check the day's opening arrangements on the museum's own page.

A few rules

Book the passes first: the White House letter to Congress, the Monument, the Library and any museum passes. Take screenshots of tickets in case the signal is poor in the stone halls. Treat every schedule as provisional, because federal sites can close for official events, security or weather at short notice, and check the official page the day before. And never pay a reseller for a pass that the museum or the Park Service gives away: this site does not sell, book or reserve anything, and neither should anyone else charge you for a free pass.

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It does not affect what is recommended here, and no sight page on this site carries one.

For the hours between check-out and a flight:

• Radical Storage