9 Best Sights in Dupont Circle and Kalorama, Washington, D.C.

With its setting on a quiet residential street and its low-key elegance, the Phillips Collection offers unhurried access to its first-rate collection of masterpieces from the 19th century and later. At the heart of the collection are works by distinguished impressionist and modern artists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Henri Matisse. A stunning quartet of Mark Rothko works merits its own room. The museum opened in 1921 in the Georgian Revival mansion of collector Duncan Phillips, who wanted to showcase his art in a museum that would stand as a memorial to his father and brother. In the intervening years, the museum expanded, and now includes much more gallery space, a café, a gift shop, and an auditorium.

The palatial, Gilded Age Anderson House is the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, the nation's oldest historical organization promoting knowledge and appreciation of America's independence. The society was founded by Revolutionary War veterans in 1783—George Washington was its first president general—and this has been its home since 1938. Guided tours of the first and second floors reveal the history of the society, the significance of the American Revolution, and the lives and collections of the home's first owners, Larz and Isabel Anderson. Built in 1905, the home was the Andersons' winter residence and retains much of its original contents—an eclectic mix of furniture, tapestries, paintings, sculpture, and Asian art. Larz, a U.S. diplomat from 1891 to 1913, and his wife, Isabel, an author and benefactress, assembled their collection as they traveled the world during diplomatic postings. Today, the house also features an exhibition gallery, open every day except Monday, and a research library that you can visit by appointment.

This opulent, Romanesque Revival mansion, also known as the Brewmaster's Castle, was the home of Christian Heurich, a German immigrant who made his fortune in the beer business. Heurich's brewery was in Foggy Bottom, where the Kennedy Center stands today. The building, a National Register of Historic Places landmark, is considered one of the most intact Victorian houses in the country, and all the furnishings were owned and used by the Heurichs. The interior is an eclectic mix of plaster detailing, carved wooden doors, and painted ceilings. The downstairs Breakfast Room, which also served as Heurich's bierstube (or beer hall), is decorated like a Rathskeller with the German motto "A good drink makes old people young." Heurich must have taken the proverb seriously. He drank beer daily, had three wives, and lived to be 102. Head to the website to see up-to-date hours and latest programming, which in the past has included guided tours, a holiday market, and outdoor happy hours.

Founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society is best known for its magazine, and entering this welcoming 13,000-square-foot exhibition space feels like stepping into its pages. The small museum has child-friendly interactives and is home to a rotating display of objects from the society's permanent collections—cultural, historical, and scientific—as well as traveling exhibitions. It also has weekend showings in its 3-D movie theater. The M Street Lobby photography exhibit, as well as the outdoor photo display around the perimeter of the museum, are free.

This is D.C.’s funkiest museum. A reimagining of your grandma’s attic by surreal filmmaker Federico Fellini, it has dozens of secret doors and passageways, as well as rooms overflowing with antiques, pictures, figures of medieval angels, and memorabilia, including 60 signed Gibson guitars, stuffed animals, chandeliers, and books. The museum, housed in five interconnecting town houses, also doubles as an inn, where rooms pay homage to notables such as John Lennon, Winston Churchill, and Rosa Parks, once a frequent visitor. You can get a peek at the themed rooms when they're not occupied by rock stars or CEOs, who value the mansion’s privacy and security.

You don't have to be a Democrat to enjoy this historic building, which became the headquarters for the Women's National Democratic Club in 1927. The exquisitely decorated mansion, built in the 1890s and designed by D.C. architect Harvey Page for opera singer Sarah Adams Whittemore, has housed senators and cabinet members over the years. Now it's best known for its library, where Eleanor Roosevelt did her radio broadcasts, and its full-length portraits of first ladies, painted in a whimsical style by folk artist April Newhouse.

President Wilson and his second wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, retired in 1921 to this Georgian Revival house designed by Washington architect Waddy B. Wood. It was on this quiet street that Wilson lived out the last few years of his life. It is the only presidential museum in the nation’s capital. Wilson died in 1924—Edith survived him by 37 years—and bequeathed the house and its contents to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Tours of the home can be general or themed or even virtual, and they provide a wonderful glimpse into the lives of this couple and the dignitaries who visited them here. Items on display include his cane collection, a Gobelin tapestry, a mosaic from Pope Benedict XV, the pen used by Wilson to sign the declaration that launched the United States into World War I, and the shell casing from the first shot fired by U.S. forces in the war. The house also contains memorabilia related to the history of the short-lived but influential League of Nations, including the colorful flag Wilson hoped would be adopted by that organization.