Language · 11 published
Country guide
At 9,833,520 km² the United States has the fourth-largest land area in the world, and its 50 states and federal district span enough longitude that the ordinary clock runs from UTC−4 to UTC−10, with the territories reaching −12, +10 and +11. The 2025 population estimate is 341,784,857. Washington, D.C. is the capital and New York the largest city, but neither stands in for the rest of it. Distance is the planning problem here, not choice: a trip works far better as one region covered properly than as anything resembling a national tour.
Reviewed by Elena Voss · Roavina Travel Editor
Every city catalogued in this country so far, ranked by how much there is to see.
Photograph · Fred Hsu on en.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · J. Crocker · Attribution
Photograph · Alek Leckszas · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · Carol M. Highsmith · Public domain
Photograph · Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada · CC BY 2.0
Photograph · Lightandtruth · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · Farragutful · CC BY-SA 4.0
Photograph · Ken Lund from Las Vegas, Nevada, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
Photograph · Marc Averette · CC BY-SA 3.0
Photograph · Quintin Soloviev · CC BY 4.0
Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.
191 places match
Category
Typical visit duration
Interests
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is the official visitor attraction for NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Florida's Space Coast.
The Adler Planetarium is a public museum dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics.
Old South Meeting House is a historic church building in Boston, Massachusetts. Built in 1729, it served as a Puritan meeting house and later became famous as a gathering place for political debate before the American Revolution.
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum occupies historic hangars on Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor. The museum preserves and interprets aviation history related to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and broader Pacific aviation heritage.
Coral Castle is a limestone sculpture garden in Naranja, unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida. Latvian-American Edward Leedskalnin single-handedly built the structure over nearly three decades, from 1923 until his death in 1951.
The National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas explores the history of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. The museum presents the scientific, military and social dimensions of atomic testing through objects, documents, photographs and interpretive displays.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is a museum dedicated to pinball machines and related arcade amusements. It operates as a nonprofit institution with proceeds directed toward charitable causes.
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art is an art museum located in Winter Park, a city adjacent to Orlando in Central Florida.
The Bass is a contemporary art museum located in Miami Beach, Florida. It occupies a distinctive Art Deco building originally constructed in the 1930s as a public library.
The Wolfsonian-FIU is a Miami Beach museum and research centre affiliated with Florida International University. Its exhibitions explore the persuasive power of art and design, especially between 1850 and 1950.
The National Archives Museum is a federal institution on the National Mall in Washington, DC. It serves as the public exhibition space of the National Archives and Records Administration.
The American Museum of Natural History stands on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in Theodore Roosevelt Park, directly across Central Park West from Central Park itself.
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States, with a collection spanning numerous cultures and historical periods.
The National Museum of Natural History is a Smithsonian museum on Washington’s National Mall dedicated to understanding the natural world. Its galleries connect human origins, planetary history, biological diversity and the evidence preserved in scientific collections.
Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is an art museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, its distinctive spiral rotunda opened in 1959.
USS Constitution is the United States Navy’s wooden-hulled frigate known as “Old Ironsides,” preserved afloat in Boston’s Charlestown Navy Yard.
The observatory opened in 1935 through the bequest of Griffith J. Griffith's gift specified that the observatory should make astronomy accessible rather than exclusive. That principle explains why a public telescope, a planetarium and hands-on interpretation coexist here.
Field Museum
Field Museum is Chicago's major natural-history museum, developed from World's Columbian Exposition collections. Its visitor experience is defined by Stanley Field Hall, Máximo, SUE, dinosaurs, evolving life, ancient Americas, Egypt, gems, and cultural collections.
ʻIolani Palace is the former royal residence of Hawaiʻi’s monarchy and a central landmark of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
The National Gallery of Art is a United States national art museum with a distinctly divided physical identity: the classical West Building, the modern East Building, and the outdoor Sculpture Garden.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a major art museum located in New York City. It occupies a prominent position on the eastern edge of Central Park along Fifth Avenue.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a Venetian-style palace museum created from one founder’s intensely personal vision.
The Morgan Library & Museum is a cultural institution in New York City centered on the personal library of financier Pierpont Morgan.
Museum of Fine Arts
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is a major encyclopaedic museum whose collections range from ancient objects and paintings to decorative arts, textiles, photography, and contemporary work.
Griffin Museum of Science and Industry
Griffin Museum of Science and Industry is a hands-on science museum in Hyde Park's former Palace of Fine Arts. Its visitor experience is defined by U-505, the coal mine, Science Storms, transport halls, genetics, farming, and the model railway.
MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art, known locally as MoMA, is a major art museum in New York City.
The Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago is an encyclopedic art museum beside Grant Park, with historic galleries and the Modern Wing.
The J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center is an art museum on a hilltop campus in Los Angeles. The official Getty visitor material describes galleries, architecture, gardens and changing exhibitions as parts of one visit.
The Freer Gallery of Art is a Smithsonian museum devoted to Asian art and the work of American artist James McNeill Whistler. It forms part of the National Museum of Asian Art beside the Arthur M.
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the flagship natural-history museum of Los Angeles County. It is located in Exposition Park, near the University of Southern California campus.
The National Air and Space Museum is a Smithsonian institution on Washington’s National Mall devoted to the history and technology of flight.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is a national institution in Washington, DC devoted to documenting the Holocaust and preserving its human meaning through evidence, testimony and remembrance.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts is the world's first major museum dedicated solely to women artists. Located in Washington, D.C., it occupies a historic former Masonic temple building.
The National Building Museum is an architecture and design museum in Washington, D.C., housed in the former Pension Building. Its subject is the built environment: architecture, engineering, design, construction, and urban planning.
USS Pampanito is a World War II-era Gato-class submarine preserved as a museum ship at San Francisco's Hyde Street Pier. Commissioned in 1943, she completed six war patrols in the Pacific Theater.
LACMA grew from the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art and became an independent art museum in the 1960s.
The Whitney Museum of American Art is a major institution in New York City dedicated to twentieth and twenty-first century American art.
The Arts and Industries Building is a historic Smithsonian museum structure located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Constructed in 1881, it was designed to house the United States National Museum's growing collections.
The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, located near the White House in Washington, D.C.
Frick Collection
The Frick Collection is an art museum housed in the former mansion of industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it occupies a Gilded Age residence designed for grand domestic living.
The Honolulu Museum of Art
Honolulu Museum of Art is Honolulu’s principal public art museum, connecting Hawaiʻi, Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas.
The National Museum of the American Indian is a Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to the cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Its Washington location occupies a distinctive building on the National Mall.
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is a settlement-house museum located in Chicago, Illinois. It preserves and interprets the history of Hull House, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.
de Young Museum
The de Young Museum is the leading fine-arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution’s museum devoted to the arts of Africa, beneath the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The Anacostia Community Museum is a Smithsonian Institution museum located in Washington, D.C.'s Anacostia neighborhood. Established in 1967, it was originally founded as the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum with a mission to serve the local community.
Hirshhorn Museum
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the Smithsonian Institution's museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., it features a distinctive cylindrical building designed by Gordon Bunshaft.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is a National presidential library and museum located on Columbia Point in Boston. It serves as the official repository for documents and artifacts from the presidency of John F.
The Old State House is a historic colonial government building in Boston, Massachusetts. Constructed in 1713, it served as the seat of the Massachusetts colonial government and later the state government until 1798.
Museum of Contemporary Art
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a leading contemporary-art institution with a downtown presence. Founded in 1979, it operates multiple locations in the Los Angeles area.
Norton Simon Museum of Art
The Norton Simon Museum is a major art museum located in Pasadena, California, within the greater Los Angeles area. It holds significant collections of European paintings, sculpture, and Asian art.
Lower East Side Tenement Museum
The Tenement Museum occupies the former tenement at 97 Orchard Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The building preserves and interprets the lives of working-class immigrant families who lived there between 1863 and 1935.
Hollyhock House is a historic residence in Los Angeles designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Built between 1919 and 1921, it represents Wright's first Los Angeles commission.
The Getty Villa
The Getty Villa is an antiquities museum in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. It is part of the J. Paul Getty Museum system.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the Smithsonian’s purpose-built museum of African American life, history, and culture on the National Mall.
The Phillips Collection is the United States' first museum of modern art, located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a major museum of modern and contemporary art in the South of Market district.
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum
Bishop Museum is the principal museum for Hawaiʻi and Pacific natural and cultural history. Founded in 1889, it holds the world's largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts and natural history specimens.
Merchant's House Museum preserves a four-storey New York City home built in 1832. The house is an unusually complete example of nineteenth-century domestic life, with original architecture, furnishings and family possessions still presented in their historic setting.
Neue Galerie New York
Neue Galerie New York is a museum devoted to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design. It occupies a historic mansion on Manhattan's Museum Mile.
The New Museum is a contemporary art museum located on the Bowery in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Founded in 1977, it was conceived as a venue dedicated to new art and new ideas.
The Petersen Automotive Museum is a specialist vehicle museum located in Los Angeles, California. It houses a notable automotive collection that spans automotive history and culture.
The National Museum of American History is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It serves as the Smithsonian's central collection for United States social, political, and material history.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a major national art museum in Washington, D.C. It occupies the historic Patent Office Building, a Greek Revival landmark constructed between 1836 and 1867.
The Hammer Museum is a UCLA-affiliated art museum located in Los Angeles, California. Founded by industrialist Armand Hammer, it opened in 1990 and became part of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1994.
The National Portrait Gallery is a Smithsonian Institution museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to portraiture. It shares the historic Patent Office Building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a major art institution located in the Civic Center area. It houses one of the country's principal collections of Asian art, spanning diverse cultures and historical periods.
Washington Place is a historic residence in Honolulu, Hawaii. Built in the 1840s, it served as the home of Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and later became the official residence for territorial governors.
Dumbarton Oaks is a research institute, museum, historic estate, and garden in Georgetown. Its public collections focus on Byzantine and pre-Columbian art, while the institution also supports research in art history, archaeology, and garden studies.
The New York Transit Museum occupies a decommissioned 1936 subway station in Downtown Brooklyn. It serves as the largest museum in the United States devoted to urban public transportation history.
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum
The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures is a museum operated by the University of Chicago. It houses major archaeological collections from West Asia and North Africa.
USS Cassin Young is a preserved Fletcher-class destroyer of the United States Navy, now a museum ship at Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, Massachusetts. The vessel saw service in World War II and the Korean War.
The Museum of the Bible is a large museum in Washington, D.C. dedicated to examining the Bible's history, narrative, and cultural influence. It opened in 2017 near the National Mall.
The National Postal Museum is a Smithsonian Institution museum dedicated to the history of the United States Postal Service and philately. Located adjacent to Union Station in Washington, D.C., it occupies the historic City Post Office building constructed in 1914.
National Museum of Asian Art
The National Museum of Asian Art is the Smithsonian Institution's national museum devoted to Asian art. It brings together the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is a major film museum in Los Angeles tied to the Academy Awards institution. It opened to the public as a dedicated institution for celebrating and exploring the art and science of cinema.
Pérez Art Museum Miami is a waterfront museum in Maurice A. Ferré Park, where architecture, terraces and views across Biscayne Bay frame a collection devoted to modern and contemporary art.
The Broad Museum
The museum opened in 2015 to house the collection assembled by Eli and Edythe Broad. The Broad collection is particularly associated with artists working in the second half of the twentieth century and after.
Adams National Historical Park is a National Park Service unit preserving the homes and grounds associated with the Adams family in Quincy, Massachusetts, within the Boston visitor-metro area.
The Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, is a landmark modernist residence in Los Angeles, California.
Louis Armstrong House Museum
The Louis Armstrong House Museum preserves the Corona, Queens home where Louis Armstrong and his wife, Lucille, lived from 1943 until Armstrong’s death in 1971.
McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum
McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum occupies the historic bridgehouse at the Michigan Avenue Bridge, now known as the DuSable Bridge, over the Chicago River.
The Paul Revere House is Boston's best-preserved Revolutionary-era house museum. Built around 1680, this wooden structure in the North End is the oldest surviving building in downtown Boston.
President Lincoln's Cottage
President Lincoln's Cottage is a historic house museum on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C. It served as Abraham Lincoln's seasonal residence during his presidency, offering retreat from the White House.
The Museum of Science is a major science museum located in Boston, Massachusetts. It spans the Charles River, situated on a dam between Boston and Cambridge.
The Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum is a museum of Jewish culture, history, and art on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It occupies a former mansion in the Museum Mile district, placing it among several major cultural institutions.
Museum of the Moving Image is a museum in Astoria, Queens, devoted to film, television, and digital media. It brings together the creative, technical, and cultural sides of moving images in one visit.
Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary-art museum founded in 1967 near Water Tower Place. Its visitor experience is defined by changing exhibitions, installations, painting, sculpture, media art, performances, commissions, talks, and public spaces.
The Harvard Museum of Natural History is Harvard University's public natural-history museum, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston.
The Legion of Honor is a major European-art museum located in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. It occupies a dramatic coastal setting overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
The Andrew Carnegie Mansion houses the Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, a design museum forming part of the Smithsonian Institution. Located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the building was constructed as a private residence for industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art and human perception at Pier 15 on the Embarcadero. Its galleries are built around experiments that visitors operate, compare and discuss rather than objects viewed from a distance.
Harvard Art Museums is Harvard University's major public art collection and gallery complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts, adjacent to Boston. The institution brings together three formerly separate museums: the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M.
The Museum of the City of New York is a history and art museum located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, facing Central Park. Founded in 1923, it occupies a Georgian Colonial Revival building designed to house its collections.
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. Founded in 1866, it is one of the oldest museums devoted to anthropology in the world.
The Queens Museum is a public art museum located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, New York City.
Intrepid Museum
The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum is a military and maritime history museum aboard the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, a National Historic Landmark. The museum complex includes the carrier itself, the submarine USS Growler, and the British Airways Concorde.
The African American Civil War Museum in Washington, D.C. tells the story of Black military service and citizenship during the American Civil War era.
Queen Emma Summer Palace
Queen Emma Summer Palace, known locally as Hānaiakamalama, stands in Nuʻuanu Valley as a historic residence with deep ties to Hawaiian royalty.
The California Science Center is a hands-on science museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles. It serves as a public institution dedicated to science education and exploration through interactive exhibits.
Source: OpenStreetMap contributors, Wikidata ·
Ten to fourteen days should focus on one US region: New York, Washington, and Boston work together by rail, while San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas form a different trip. Miami, Orlando, and Honolulu each require separate travel time and should not be appended casually.
US admission depends on passport, visa status, and eligibility for the Visa Waiver Program and ESTA. Confirm both the Department of State visa guidance and Customs and Border Protection requirements for the actual route.
Domestic flights are often necessary between US regions, while Amtrak is strongest on the Northeast Corridor. A car is unnecessary in New York or Washington but can be useful in Los Angeles and beyond compact city centres.
April to May and September to October are broad shoulder-season references, not a national weather forecast. Florida heat, western wildfire conditions, hurricane exposure, and Hawaii's trans-Pacific logistics require destination-specific checks.
The United States uses the US dollar (USD). Card use is widespread, but taxes, deposits, and gratuities can make the final amount differ from the displayed base price; keep a second payment method for holds or terminal failures.
Dial 911 for police, fire, or medical emergencies in the United States. Type A and B sockets use 120 V; national tap-water safety is not recorded here, so consult the local utility or accommodation.
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