Thomas Jefferson Memorial
National Memorial, Administered By The National Park Service; Listed On The National Register Of Historic Places · Washington, District of Columbia
A white marble rotunda on the south bank of the Tidal Basin, built for the two-hundredth anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth and dedicated by Franklin Roosevelt in April 1943. John Russell Pope designed it as an argument rather than a decoration: Jefferson admired the Pantheon in Rome and copied its dome at the University of Virginia and at Monticello, so the memorial to him is a Pantheon too, and the circle answers the rectangle of the Lincoln Memorial across the water. Inside stands Rudulph Evans's bronze Jefferson, nineteen feet tall, in a fur-collared coat, facing the White House. Four panels around the chamber carry his own words - the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a passage on slavery from Notes on the State of Virginia, and a letter arguing that laws must change as minds change. The building is open at every hour of the day and night, it costs nothing, and the walk around it is ringed by the cherry trees Tokyo sent in 1912, which is why the first week of April is the busiest week of its year.
16 East Basin Drive Southwest, Washington, District of Columbia, 20242, United States
Open 24 hours a day, every day, free of charge. Rangers are on duty roughly 9:30 AM to 10 PM; the undercroft exhibit and bookshop keep shorter hours. The Tidal Basin walkway is subject to closures from the ongoing seawall rehabilitation - check the park site before travelling.
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