The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC

The Smithsonian Institution is the largest museum complex and research center in the world. It is composed from 19 museums and art galleries, 9 research centers and the National Zoological Park. The museum complex also includes outdoor museums.

The Smithsonian Institution is the keeper of a collection composed by over 142 billion objects representing the most important historical heritage of the United States of America. The tourists who want to visit the whole collection of this great museum complex would need to be prepared for a day of walking through all its galleries. Of course, it is practically impossible to see everything in a single visit. The best plan would be to choose one topic and to research only that in one visit. Depending on your area of interest, you can choose among the many existing museums, such as The Air and Space Museum, The African Art Museum, The American Art Museum, The Natural History Museum, The American History Museum, The American Indian Museum, the IMAX movie theaters and many many others. Most of the museums are open every day of the year, except December 25. Most of them can be visited for free.

Interesting to notice, you can find here the postal stamps collection of John Lennon, exposed in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. The custodians of the collection insist that the former member of the Beatles music band was a fanatic collector of postal stamps. The story goes that the cousin of John Lennon bought the stamp collection and offered it as a present to John Lennon when he was 9 years old. The John Lennon's collection consists of 565 postal stamps.