Washington, D.C.

The city is the central element in a conurbation with a population of 3.75 million which also includes five counties in Maryland and five in Virginia, in which the hundreds of thousands of federal employees live. Almost 70% of the inhabitants of Washington are Afro-Americans, who live mainly in the south-western, south-eastern and north-eastern quadrants of the city, while the north-western quadrant is mainly occupied by whites. Behind the sumptuous façade of Washington, within a short distance of the Capitol, is another world of poverty and unemployment.

The city was founded and built for one purpose alone, to provide an independent place for the work of government. The site selected, 100 miles/160km above the outflow of the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay, has a climate which does not make work particularly agreeable in summer, when it is so hot and sultry that most of the staff take off their jackets except when they are working in their air-conditioned offices. Accordingly the best times for a visit to Washington are spring and autumn.

Washington DC strikes visitors as an atypical American city, for there are no skyscrapers, which indeed are prohibited by law. The townscape of Washington is one of Classical-style buildings, some of them of giant size, laid out along the avenues of enormous width which have earned Washington the name of the "city of magnificent distances". Most of the 20 million people who visit Washington annually are Americans anxious to see the incarnation of American democracy in stone and the sites which are so familiar to them from schooldays and television. Foreign visitors may be surprised to discover how freely accessible - though strictly controlled - even such sensitive areas of government as the Capitol are. They will also find an abundance of museums, some of which are among the most important of their kind in the world.

Washington DC is the seat of Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) and of the President of the United States. Over 350,000 people - from drivers to the White House Chief of Staff - are employed by the Administration, and tens of thousands more work in various national and international organizations (the World Bank, the Organization of American States, the International Monetary Fund) based in Washington, as lobbyists or in various services dependent on government.

Washington has little industry, but there are in the city, in addition to five universities, various research institutes and laboratories concerned with electronics, space travel and armament projects, so that Washington's population has the highest percentage of qualified researchers of any American city. The city's second most important source of revenue - after the work of government - is tourism.

Culture is represented in Washington by theatres like the National Theatre and orchestras like the National Symphony Orchestra, housed in the extensive John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. More important, and perhaps of more interest to visitors, are the city's numerous museums, headed by the National Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution. Washington also has the National Archives and the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world. Nor should the culinary world be forgotten: the city's eating-places range from the hamburger stand by way of a variety of foreign cuisines to gourmet French restaurants.

History

After breaking away from Britain in 1776 the young United States had at first no capital and in consequence Congress met in eight different places. In 1789 New York became the capital, but a year later gave place to Philadelphia. Congress then passed the R