500 17th St NW; closest Metro stop is Farragut North or Farragut West. Mon, Wed & FriSun 10am5pm, Thurs 10am9pm. Admission $5, free on Mon and on Thurs after 5pm. tel 202/639-1700, www.corcoran.org/
Just down the street from the White House, the Corcoran Gallery is one of the oldest and most respected art museums in the US. It's also one of the nicest to visit in DC, with good guided tours (daily except Tues), an excellent gallery shop and a caf that features rousing gospel Sunday brunches. Especially strong on American art from frontier artists like Remington and Bierstadt, to portraiture by Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins, and modern works by Calder, Warhol and Rothko it also includes a sampling of Dutch masters, medieval tapestries and French Impressionists. In the Salon Dor (Gilded Room), an eighteenth-century Parisian interior has been re-created to stunning effect, with floor-to-ceiling hand-carved paneling, gold-leaf decor and ceiling murals.