Capitol Hill: Where Democracy Lives

Capitol Hill is where American democracy has its most concentrated physical expression — the domed Capitol Building at the hill's crest visible from throughout the city, the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress flanking it, and the House and Senate office buildings extending east in a grid of neoclassical monuments to legislative ambition. The Capitol Building itself, completed in 1800 and expanded continuously through the 19th century, houses the two chambers of Congress in a building whose architectural grandeur — the rotunda with Constantino Brumidi's fresco ceiling, the National Statuary Hall, the Capitol Visitor Center with its extraordinary exhibitions on congressional history — constitutes one of the most remarkable public buildings in the Western hemisphere. The view from the Capitol steps looking west down the Mall toward the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial captures the intent of L'Enfant's original plan for the Federal City as a ceremonial expression of republican idealism.

The residential streets of Capitol Hill east of the Capitol Building constitute one of Washington's most characterful neighbourhoods — the Victorian rowhouses, the neighbourhood bars and restaurants of Barracks Row on 8th Street SE, and the Eastern Market, a 19th-century market hall with a Saturday and Sunday outdoor market that is one of the city's finest community gathering spaces. The market's indoor hall serves fresh produce, meat, and dairy to the neighbourhood's residents seven days a week, while the outdoor weekend market brings antique dealers, artisan craftspeople, and the social life of a neighbourhood that takes its public spaces with appropriate seriousness. The nearby Folger Shakespeare Library holds the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works in a building whose public programming sustains the library's mission as a research institution and a living cultural venue.

The Supreme Court, which faces the Capitol from First Street, is open to visitors for oral arguments during its October through June term — the opportunity to watch the nine Justices engage with counsel on cases that will shape American law is one of the most intellectually engaging public experiences available in any democratic capital. The public galleries admit visitors on a first-come basis, and the arguments — conducted with the particular formality and intellectual intensity that the Court's tradition demands — provide an education in constitutional reasoning that no classroom fully replicates. The Library of Congress across the street, with its magnificent 1897 Jefferson Building and its exhibitions on American culture and history, completes the legislative and judicial monument cluster that makes Capitol Hill the most institutionally significant neighbourhood in the United States.