The National Mall is a landscaped park near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and various memorials, sculptures, and statues. It is administered by the National Park Service (NPS) of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit of the National Park System. The park receives approximately 24 million visitors each year.
The National Mall with the Lincoln Memorial and its reflecting pool (foreground), the Washington Monument behind it, and the United States Capitol (background) in 2010
National Mall proper and adjacent areas (April 2002). The Mall had a grassy lawn flanked on each side by unpaved paths and rows of American elm trees as its central feature. (Numbers in the image correspond to numbers in the list of landmarks, museums and other features below.)
Andrew Jackson Downing Urn in May 2012
June 2004 view from the United States Capitol facing west, over the Grant Memorial and Capitol Reflecting Pool in the foreground, and across the National Mall towards the Washington Monument
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for construction and human use, investigation of existing social, ecological, and soil conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of other interventions that will produce desired outcomes.
Stourhead in Wiltshire, England, designed by Henry Hoare (1705–1785), "the first landscape gardener, who showed in a single work, genius of the highest order"
A canal design focused on esthetical landscape architecture in Stockholm, Sweden.
A river with functional (flood preventing) landscape engineering in Houston, Texas, for comparison.
Orangery at the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris
