United States · District of Columbia · Washington
Dupont Circle, Washington — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Dupont Circle is a neighborhood in Northwest Washington, built around the traffic circle and marble fountain named for Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont. Embassy Row starts here. From the circle, Massachusetts Avenue carries diplomatic missions and Gilded Age mansions northwest, while Connecticut Avenue runs the shops and cafes toward Downtown. The district has long been a center of the city's LGBTQ+ life and its independent bookstores.
About Dupont Circle
Where to stay in Dupont Circle
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Staying in Dupont Circle puts you on foot between Embassy Row and Downtown, with the Red Line station opening onto the circle itself. The rooms run from boutique hotels in old townhouses to guesthouses on the leafy streets off Connecticut Avenue. Sightseers do well here.
The Phillips Collection sits a few blocks northwest, and the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall are a short Metro ride south. Evenings lean toward restaurants and bars, though the blocks climbing toward Kalorama stay quiet. Book here for walking and dining; anyone set on the Mall at their doorstep should look further south.
About Dupont Circle
What are the main landmarks in Dupont Circle?
The district's own museum is The Phillips Collection, opened in 1921 as the country's first museum of modern art. East on 16th Street stands the House of the Temple, the neoclassical Scottish Rite headquarters modeled on the tomb at Halicarnassus. The marble fountain has a famous pedigree.
Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon carved and framed it, the same sculptor and architect behind the Lincoln Memorial and its seated Statue of Abraham Lincoln. Along Massachusetts Avenue the embassies run northwest toward Number One Observatory Circle, the Vice President's residence. Farther out, the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall, including the National Museum of Natural History, lie a short Metro ride south, while the National Zoological Park sits up Connecticut Avenue.
What is the history of Dupont Circle?
The land here lay largely open. After the Civil War, speculators drained the low ground north of the White House and traced the roundabout first called Pacific Circle. Silver-rush money followed, and by the 1870s Nevada senators and other magnates were raising mansions around it, among them the turreted pile known as Stewart's Castle.
The circle took its present name from Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, whose bronze statue of 1884 later gave way to the marble fountain of 1921. Duncan Phillips opened his modern-art collection in the family house here in 1921, and after the Depression thinned the great fortunes, many surrounding mansions passed to embassies, private clubs, and cultural institutions. Through the mid-twentieth century the quarter drew artists and became a center of gay Washington.
Where is Dupont Circle?
Five roadways gather at the circle: Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire Avenues, joined by P Street and 19th Street. Adams Morgan lies to the north. Logan Circle sits to the east, past Scott Circle, while the western streets drop toward Rock Creek Park and Georgetown and Kalorama's embassies climb the slope to the northwest. Downtown and the White House are a few blocks south.
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Updated July 2026