Place of the week: Newseum

Photo: Courtesy NC in DC via the Flickr Creative Commons

You don't have to be a news junkie to appreciate the Newseum, D.C.'s museum dedicated to--you guessed it--all things news. Start in the basement to see the largest display of chunks of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, then take the glass elevator all the way to the top and work your way down. Take your time on the information-heavy top floor: the best place to start is the Today's Front Pages gallery, where you can see printouts of what people all over the world read on their front pages that very day. The outside terrace offers a great photo op with the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, weather permitting. The News Corp. News History Gallery features slide-out displays of historical headlines from the earliest days of the press up through recent years, outlining piviotal moments from the Salem Witch Trials to World War I. The 9/11 Gallery provides a haunting reminder of that day, with a wall of front pages announcing the news and a video showing the thoughts of journalists who covered the event. Downstairs, you can watch a live broadcast on NPR, try your hand at reporting in the NBC News Interactive Newsroom, or pay homage to journalists who died on the job.

Newseum
555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 888 639 7386
Web: www.newseum.org