North side of the Mall, 14th St NW and Constitution Ave; closest Metro¹ Smithsonian.

If you like kitsch, you won't want to miss the bizarre melange² of cultural artefacts at the National Museum of American History. George Washington's wooden teeth, Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves, and the ruby³ slippers⁴ Judy Garland wore in the Wizard of Oz are set among didactic displays tracing the country's development. It's not so much a center for scholarly study as a sanctuary⁵ for vanishing Americana, incorporating Model T Fords, old post offices and even a restored, turn-of-the-century ice-cream parlor⁶, which still serves up banana splits.

As you enter from the Mall, directly on to the second floor, a sound-and-light display showcases the battered⁷ red, white and blue flag that inspired the US national anthem⁸ - the Star-Spangled Banner itself, which survived the British bombing of Baltimore harbor during the War of 1812. The worthier⁹ exhibits are also on this floor: an account of the rural farm-based society of the early US stands across from an examination of the mass movement of African-Americans from Southern farms to the wartime industries of northern cities. A lunch counter from Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina, evokes¹⁰ the sit-in of 1960, while "American Encounters" focuses on New Mexico, looking at how tourism has affected¹¹ communities such as the pueblo¹² of Santa Clara and Hispanic Chimayo. On the first floor, the "Information Age" gallery traces communications from Morse's first telegraph to Apple Macintoshes, while separate galleries display in glorious profusion¹³ the artefacts and machines that have shaped modern America - from lightbulbs and motorbikes to trains and atomic clocks. The top floor holds political memorabilia (much of it over a century old), stamp and coin collections, old TV sets and typewriters, though two final outstanding exhibits inject a serious tone - "Personal Legacy¹⁴: the Healing of a Nation" brings together some of the 25,000 items left by relatives at the Vietnam Memorial in DC, while "A More Perfect Union" deals candidly¹⁵ with the shameful¹⁶ internment¹⁷ of Japanese-American citizens during World War II.