140 Rock Creek Church Road NW

Washington, D.C. 20011

202-829-0436

If you are a great admirer of our 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, then you may want to pay a visit to the cottage on the hill where he gathered his thoughts to think and to write.

Designated a national monument by President Bill Clinton in 2000, restored and opened to the public in February 2008, President Lincoln's Cottage is the most significant historic site directly associated with Lincoln's tumultuous presidency.

While President Lincoln and his family used the cottage as a refuge from the unrelenting pressures of the Civil War, it was also a place where he conducted the nation's important business, met with generals and members of his cabinet and did much of the thinking that shaped the Emancipation Proclamation. A statue of President Abraham Lincoln (pictured left) at his cottage site.

At the Gothic Revival cottage, President Lincoln wrote speeches, letters and policies that inspired a war-weary north to fight for a republic that would finally abolish slavery and save the union.

Located on a picturesque hilltop of the Armed Forces Retirement, known in Lincoln's day as the Soldier's Home, Lincoln's daily commute to the cottage enabled him to meet wounded soldiers and self-emancipated men, women, and children. Today, multimedia-guided tours of President Lincoln's Cottage tell the untold stories that offer new insights about Lincoln's presidency, his private life, and his most influential ideas that he developed while living at the cottage on the hill. The cottage tours are held every hour Monday through Saturday starting from 10 a.m. and ending at 3 p.m. For more information, visit lincolncottage.org.

National Museum of Health and Medicine

2500 Linden Lane

Silver Spring, Md. 20910

301-319-3300

If you are amazed by the complexities of the human body and the effects of diseases on it, the National Museum of Health and Medicine may intrigue you.

Founded in 1862, it's one of the oldest museums in the U.S. Over those 153 years, it has collected 24, 6662,515 objects.

It would probably take 153 years to view all of them, not to mention a strong stomach or a keen fascination with the human anatomy.

The museum boasts it offers visitors a unique perspective on health and medicine because it is one of the few places on earth where the public can actually see the effects of disease on the human body. What's more, it is also one of the few places where diseases can be seen with the instruments and equipment used to diagnose and or treat the disease, with case histories of afflicted patients.

Some of the interesting items the museum has had on display over the years include a gangrenous human foot, a mummified human dicephalic infant (co-joined twins), colons from Civil War soldiers who suffered from diarrheal disease, in some cases for many months; the brain and partial skeleton of President Garfield's assassin; World War I General John J Pershing's dentures; surgical instruments made from scrap aluminum by the Viet Cong; vases found at Hiroshima after atomic attack, a New York City Medical Examiner's Collection and George Lord's pocket surgical kit. Lord was the regimental surgeon for General George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn.

The museum also hold artifacts of several U.S. Presidents including Grover Cleveland, Dwight Eisenhower, James Garfield, Ulysses Grant, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt as well as other famous Americans, such as World War II Admiral Chester Nimitz, Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere and Civil War Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles.

Less than one percent of the museum's collections are on display and the number of objects on display depends on the topics in the exhibits.

Admission to the museum is free and is open daily, including weekends and holidays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit the medicalmuseum.mil.

The Phillips Collection

1600 21st Street, NW

Washington, D.C. 20009

202-387-2151

Great works of the world's fine art are usually displayed on spacious white walls in huge metropolitan art museums. In Washington, you can enjoy the paintings of some of the best impressionists and modern American and European artists in the warm intimacy of a Georgian Revival home.

The Phillips Collection, America's first museum of modern art, was founded following a family tragedy.

Duncan and Jim Phillips were brothers raised in a wealthy family that established its roots in Washington in 1895. They became avid collectors of art.

In 1917, their father died, and a year later, influenza claimed Jim's life. Duncan and his mother, Eliza Laughlin Phillips, coped with their sorrow by founding the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery, which opened to the public in 1921 in the family's home in Washington's DuPont Circle neighborhood.

"Sorrow all but overwhelmed me," Duncan wrote later. "Then I turned to my love of painting for the will to live."

Over time, the building was renovated to include more galleries and offices, particularly after the Phillips family moved out in 1930.

Today, the Phillips Collection includes the works of famous impressionist and modern American and European artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Honoré Daumier, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Jacob Lawrence and Richard Diebenkorn, among others.

Currently, the Phillips Collection is featuring more than 125 works of American artist Man Ray. The exhibition displays side-by-side for the first time the original plaster, wood, papier-mâché, and string models from the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris and Man Ray's inventive photographs of these unusual forms, and the series of Shakespearean Equations paintings they inspired.

The Phillips Collection is open Tuesday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with extended hours on Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. For more information, visit, phillipscollection.org.

DEA Museum & Visitors Center

700 Army Navy Drive

Arlington, Va. 22202

202-307-3463

Whether or not you believe the nation's continuous war on drugs is working, this museum may evoke some interesting flashbacks for visitors.

The Drug Enforcement Agency opened a museum in 1999 to educate the American public on the history of the DEA and on the impact of drug addiction on the nation from the past to the present.

Over the last 16 years, the DEA Museum archives have been steadily growing and now hold more than 2,000 objects such as old patent medicine bottles, bongs, opium and marijuana pipes, cocaine spoons, handguns, assault weapons, drug concealment containers, and clothes from the 1970s and 1980s worn by undercover DEA agents to blend in with drug runners and pushers.

The DEA's archives also hold 5,000 images from the 1800s to the present. A library collection database is being built.

Current exhibits include an interactive exhibit that takes a comprehensive look at the prescription drug abuse problem in the U.S. by exploring its history.

The museum also features an extensive exhibit that highlights the history of illegal drugs in America from the 19th century when Americans first discovered morphine, heroin and cocaine, followed by the rise of drug abuse and addiction, which led state governments and the federal government to outlaw these drugs and many others. The exhibit also details how the DEA is battling sophisticated and powerful groups headquartered in foreign nations that control today's drug trade in the U.S.

Admission to the museum is free and is open Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, visit deamuseum.org.

The Anderson House

(The Society of the Cincinnati)

2118 Massachusetts Ave.

Washington, D.C. 20008

202-785-2040

Revolutionary War buffs will find many historical gems in the 110-year-old Anderson House that is operated by an organization who are the descendants of the veterans who fought in the war for American independence and changed the world forever.

American diplomat Larz Anderson completed the construction of his "Florentine villa" mansion in the capital city in 1905. For more than three decades, Larz and his wife, Isabel, enjoyed their home to showcase their art collection and to entertain Washington's high society.

Dominated by English and Italian influence, the mansion features carved wood walls, gilded papier-mâché ceilings, ornate iron staircases and intricate marble floors. 

Larz was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, founded in 1783 by Revolutionary War officers of the Continental Army and Navy, which became the nation's first hereditary organization. The organization's mission is to preserve the ideals and fellowship for which the Revolutionary war veterans fought and died for. George Washington was instrumental in the Society's founding and served as its first president general.

After the Andersons passed away, their mansion became a National Historic Landmark in 1939 and the new headquarters for the Society of the Cincinnati. The nonprofit, historical and educational organization promotes the public interest in the American Revolution through its library of books, manuscripts and other publications as well as its museum collection of art and artifacts. The Anderson House also hosts daily exhibitions, programs, research and other activities. 

Captain Jacob Shubrick is depicted in this portrait (to the left) in the uniform prescribed for the Second South Carolina Continental Regiment. By Henry Benbridge, ca. 1777, oil on canvas.

The Society of Cincinnati's museum collections focuses on telling the stories of the Revolutionary War with paintings and sculptures that illustrate the people and events of the war, military equipment used by soldiers and officers and personal artifacts such as jewelry, coins, pocket watches and other trinkets once owned by the young nation's citizens.  

The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and the library hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, visit societyofcincinnati.org.