Enjoy it while visiting Arlington in Virginia
Arlington National Cemetery is the nation’s most hallowed burial ground, a sweeping 639-acre landscape on the Virginia bluffs overlooking Washington, D.C., where more than 400,000 veterans and their eligible family members are laid to rest among rolling green hills, marble headstones, and towering memorial trees that have borne witness to funeral processions spanning every American conflict from the Civil War through the present day, drawing millions of visitors each year to walk the ordered rows of white headstones that create a visual testament to service and sacrifice across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital.
The land now occupied by Arlington National Cemetery was originally part of a 1,100-acre estate owned by George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted grandson of President George Washington, who built the Greek Revival mansion known as Arlington House between 1802 and 1818 atop a prominent hill with sweeping views of the Potomac River and the emerging capital city, intending the estate to serve as both a working plantation and a living memorial to the nation’s first president before the property passed to his daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis, wife of Robert E. Lee.
When Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army in April 1861 to lead the Confederate forces of Virginia during the Civil War, Union forces seized the strategic heights overlooking Washington and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs ordered the first military burials on the estate in May 1864, deliberately placing graves adjacent to Arlington House and burying a vault containing the remains of 1,800 Civil War casualties in Mrs. Lee’s rose garden to ensure the family could never return to the home they had abandoned at the outbreak of the conflict, a decision that permanently transformed the private estate into a sacred national burial ground.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is the cemetery’s most revered monument, a white marble sarcophagus situated atop a hill overlooking Washington that holds unidentified remains from World War I, with the Tomb Guard from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment maintaining a continuous vigil every minute of every day since July 2, 1937, executing the precisely choreographed 21-step walk across the black mat before the tomb in a ritual that continues uninterrupted through rain, snow, and extreme temperatures as one of the most exacting ceremonial duties in the American military.
The John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame marks the gravesite of the 35th president of the United States, whose burial on the hillside below Arlington House on November 25, 1963, drew one of the largest television audiences in history as Jacqueline Kennedy lit the eternal flame during a ceremony attended by more than 100 heads of state and foreign dignitaries, with the simple black slate headstone and the continuously burning flame remaining among the most visited and photographed memorial sites within the cemetery’s 639 acres.
Arlington House, known as the Robert E. Lee Memorial, stands at the highest point of the cemetery property with a commanding view of the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the U.S. Capitol Building across the river, its restored interiors and museum exhibits chronicling the intertwined stories of the Custis family, the Lees, and the transformation of the estate into the nation’s most sacred military cemetery during the crucible of the Civil War.
The Memorial Amphitheater, constructed of white marble from the same Vermont quarry that supplied the Lincoln Memorial, seats approximately 1,500 people beneath a grand dome and hosts the national ceremonies for Memorial Day and Veterans Day each year, with space for state funerals and addresses by presidents spanning more than a century of American history since its dedication in 1920.
Section 27 contains the graves of more than 3,800 former slaves and freedmen who resided in the Freedman’s Village established on the Arlington estate during and after the Civil War, a community of formerly enslaved African Americans that provided housing, education, and employment from 1863 until 1900 during the Reconstruction era, with simple headstones marking the resting places of those who transitioned from bondage to freedom on the very grounds that now honor the nation’s military dead.
The Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial and the Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial stand within the cemetery grounds as tributes to the astronauts who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration, with the Challenger memorial marking a common grave for seven unidentified remains recovered from the 1986 disaster and the Columbia memorial honoring the seven crew members who perished during reentry in 2003 in a shaded grove near the cemetery’s Memorial Drive entrance.
The Women in Military Service for America Memorial, located at the ceremonial entrance to the cemetery, features an expansive curved retaining wall and an education center devoted to honoring the nearly three million women who have served in the armed forces since the American Revolution, with exhibits documenting the evolving roles of women from nurses on Civil War battlefields to combat pilots and flag officers in the modern military.
Spring from mid-March through May brings the most popular visiting season when cherry blossoms and flowering dogwood trees burst into bloom across the grounds and mild temperatures make walking the 639-acre property comfortable, while Memorial Day weekend draws the largest crowds as the Flags-In ceremony places a small American flag at every single headstone through the efforts of more than 1,000 soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment.
Summer months from June through August bring hot conditions with temperatures reaching the upper 80s and 90s, making early morning visits the most comfortable option before the sun beats down across the open lawns of headstones, while fall offers stunning conditions from October through early November as the changing foliage of mature oaks and maples turns brilliant shades of gold, orange, and deep red against the stark white marble markers.
Weekday mornings provide the quietest experience with smaller crowds at the changing of the guard ceremony and the low angle of the rising sun casting long dramatic shadows across the ordered rows of headstones, while the Arlington Cemetery Metro station on the Blue Line provides direct access from downtown Washington for visitors arriving from the capital or other points across the Washington metropolitan area.