National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art was created by a joint resolution of Congress in 1937, with funds and a collection given by the financier Andrew W. Mellon, and it opened in 1941. It occupies two very different buildings on the north side of the National Mall: John Russell Pope's neoclassical West Building and I. M. Pei's angular East Building, completed in 1978, linked by an underground concourse.

The West Building holds European and American art from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci, the only painting by Leonardo in the Americas, is the piece many visitors look for first. Other highlights include Vermeer's A Lady Writing a Letter, Rembrandt's The Mill, Raphael's Alba Madonna and Titian's Venus with a Mirror. The East Building concentrates on modern and contemporary art. Between them, the concourse passage contains Leo Villareal's Multiverse, a long tunnel of around 41,000 LED lights that children usually enjoy.

The Sculpture Garden opened in 1999 on 6.1 acres beside the West Building. Its fountain pool becomes an ice rink in winter, and there is a café in the garden.

Admission is free and no passes are needed for the galleries, although some events ask for free registration. Both buildings and the garden are open daily from 10am to 5pm and close on 25 December and 1 January. The West Building's 7th Street entrance is closed until further notice, so use the 6th Street entrance or the Constitution Avenue side. The gallery lists the Sculpture Garden main entrance, the West Building 6th Street entrance and the East Building main entrance as accessible.

The gallery suits art lovers, couples and anyone who wants a calmer stop between busier Smithsonian museums. Choose one building per visit if time is short; two to three hours is a comfortable stay. There are several places to eat across the campus, including a food area in the concourse.

There is no visitor garage, so use public transport. Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter Metro station is about six minutes on foot from the West Building, and buses run along Constitution Avenue. The National Museum of Natural History is next door to the west, and the National Air and Space Museum is directly across the Mall.