Washington with just under 700 thousand inhabitantswas founded on 16 July 1790 and since that year it has been the federal capital of the United States. Overlooking the banks of the Potomac Riveris located in the District of Columbia, nestled between the states of Maryland and Virginia (on the east coast of the country). All the most important institutions of the US federal government are located here, including the White House where the President in office lives, the Capitol with the two branches of Congress, the Supreme Court and the Library of Congressas well as dozens of ministerial offices and embassies in all the countries of the world. Washington is also the stage for some of the most important ceremonies of US democracy, including the inauguration of the President of the United States, which traditionally takes place in January.
However, be careful not to confuse Washington with Washington, DC (District of Columbia): the former is a US state (in the north-west corner of the country), while the latter is the federal district which actually constitutes the capital of the USA.
The creation of the District of Columbia and Washington, DC
But who had the idea of the Mall and, more generally, of making Washington a city that seems designed to celebrate the very idea of politics and power? The choice dates back to the very early years of the United States, when the 13 original colonies had recently gained independence from Great Britain. The problem to be solved was to find a “neutral” seat for the federal government, thus excluding cities such as New York or Philadelphia, which had hosted it temporarily in previous years. Not to favor any state, Congress and the first president George Washington decided to create a brand new capital. They then chose an area along the Potomac Riverbetween Maryland and Virginia, in a strategic position for trade and defense. The two states then ceded 25 km2 and the District of Columbia (A.D).
Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s plans for the capital of the United States
Work began shortly afterwards and the project was entrusted to the French architect and engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfantborn in Paris in 1754 and arrived in the future United States to fight in the Revolutionary War. L’Enfant was known for his innovative ideas and proposed an urban plan based on a grid of wide streets, crisscrossed by large diagonal avenues that converged into squares and parks. Something that may seem obvious to us today, but it was “futuristic” in a Western culture still accustomed to cities that grew in a disorderly and casual way. One of the distinctive elements of his project was that the squares and avenues had to serve both to make traffic flow smoother and to draw the visitors’ gaze towards the buildings of power, i.e. Capitol And White House.

A decades-long construction site
L’Enfant’s grandiose and idealistic vision soon had to collide with reality, with a shortage of funds, a lack of local infrastructure and the difficulty of connecting the city to the country’s main trade routes. It is no wonder then that the buildings in the heart of Washington also took years to complete. The Capitolfor example, was begun to the design of the amateur architect William Thornton already in 1793, but it was officially inaugurated only in 1826 (for the dome we even had to wait until 1865). It went slightly better for the White House: designed by James Hobantook only eight years to finish, from 1792 to 1800. The city began to grow more dynamically during Jefferson’s presidency (1801-1809), but suffered another setback in 1814. In that year the The British, once again at war with the United States, occupied Washington and burned much of the city.
Washington DC, a monument city
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Washington developed at a much less frenetic pace than other US cities such as New York, Chicago or San Francisco, remaining linked to its almost exclusively political and administrative nature. However, it was between the 19th and 20th centuries that some of its most representative monuments appeared on the Mall. First of all the Washington Monument inaugurated in 1888, exactly in the center of the Mall. The 169 meter white marble obelisk is still, by law, the tallest building in the city.

Washington is not the only president to be celebrated on the Mall or in its immediate vicinity. The Lincoln Memorial (1922) ideally closes the side of the Mall that overlooks Virginia, while a little further away is the Jefferson Memorial (1943).

Between large protest demonstrations such as the one for the civil rights of African Americans in 1963 and the daily life of the US administrative machine, over the years the center of Washington has taken shape, becoming the mirror with which the country tells itself to the world, but above all to its own citizens.

The inauguration ceremony of the President
Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the USA on 20 January 2025 was particular: due to the record cold, the ceremony took place indoors, in the Capitol Building. It had been decades since a president had been sworn into office National Mallone of the most representative places of the federal capital of the country. The first to do so in the current location in front of the Congress Building was Ronald Reagan In the 1981 and since then every new president has followed this tradition, also starting a real competition to fill the panorama between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial with the greatest number of people. The record is currently held by Barack Obamawhich in January 2009 brought between one and a half and two million people to Washington for its swearing-in.
