The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial is the newest on the Tidal Basin, dedicated in 2011, and one of the most striking on the entire Mall. The 30-foot granite figure of Dr. King emerging from the Stone of Hope is unlike anything else in Washington — and at night, lit against the dark water of the Tidal Basin, it is breathtaking.

walk the length of the Reflecting Pool — 2,000 feet of still water stretching between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. On August 28, 1963, this is where hundreds of thousands of people gathered for the March on Washington. Your guide will put you in that moment: what it looked like, what it felt like, what was at stake, and why what happened that day — and what Dr. King said from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — still echoes through American life today.

The Korean War is often called the Forgotten War, sandwiched between the heroic narrative of World War II and the turbulent legacy of Vietnam. The 36,574 Americans who died in Korea deserve better than that, and the Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National Mall is one of the most powerful arguments for why. Nineteen stainless steel statues — soldiers on patrol, faces drawn, weapons ready — advance through a field of juniper toward a wall etched with the faces of 2,500 service members drawn from actual military photographs. At night, the effect is extraordinary. Your guide will tell you about the war, the men who fought it, and the long, complicated road to building a memorial that would finally give them their due.

The WWII Memorial on the National Mall honors all of those who served; but most visitors walk through it without understanding what they're looking at. Your guide will walk you through the symbolism of the 56 pillars representing every state and territory, the two arches marking the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, and the 4,048 gold stars on the Freedom Wall, each one representing 100 American lives lost. And yes — we'll find Kilroy. The most famous piece of wartime graffiti in American history is hidden somewhere in the memorial. Most people never find it on their own. The story of how this memorial came to exist is almost as compelling as the memorial itself. For decades after the war ended, there was no national monument to the Americans who fought it. The effort to build one took nearly 60 years, sparked one of the most contentious design debates in DC history, and nearly collapsed multiple times before the first stone was laid. Your guide will tell you the whole story.

Washington DC is a city that most people think they understand. They've seen the pictures. They know the monuments. They did the eighth-grade field trip. But there is a difference between seeing these places and understanding them — between walking past the Korean War Veterans Memorial and actually knowing why nineteen stainless steel soldiers are frozen mid-patrol in a field of juniper, or why the WWII Memorial almost didn't get built at all, or what it actually felt like to stand at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, when a quarter million people gathered on that ground and changed the course of American history.

There are monuments, and then there is the Lincoln Memorial. Nineteen marble steps. Thirty-six columns for the thirty-six states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death. A 19-foot seated figure of the sixteenth president looking out over the Reflecting Pool toward the Capitol. And on the south wall, the full text of his Second Inaugural Address — some of the most extraordinary words ever spoken by an American president. Your guide will tell you about Lincoln: the man, the president, the myth, and the complicated legacy. You'll stand on the exact spot — marked in the marble — where Martin Luther King Jr. stood on August 28, 1963, and delivered one of the most important speeches in American history. At dusk, with the Mall stretched out before you and the city going quiet around you, it is one of the most powerful places you can stand in this country.