# Lincoln Memorial audio guide, five stops, free.

Thirty-six Doric columns, one for each state in the Union when Lincoln died, around a marble figure 19 feet tall. Five recordings take you from the plaza to the top step; for any other inscription or carving, ask Chiaro with a photo.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with Lincoln Memorial. Page: https://chiaro.ai/landmarks/lincoln-memorial/

The Lincoln Memorial audio guide on this page is self-guided, costs nothing, and opens on the plaza at the foot of the east steps with the Reflecting Pool at your back; five stories and one climb follow. From there it goes up to the landing below the white marble steps, where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in 1963; in between the columns to Daniel Chester French's statue in the central chamber; left into the south chamber for the Gettysburg Address and Jules Guerin's Emancipation mural; and back out to the top of the steps for the long view east to the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Roughly ten minutes of listening, all of it on one axis of one building, with 58 steps between the plaza and the chamber, or the elevator to the left of the steps if you would rather ride.

Everything here traces back to the Park Service's Lincoln Memorial pages at nps.gov/linc, read on 26 September 2026, backed by an independent reference, and we keep the sentence behind each fact on file so we notice when the Park Service revises one. Holiday exceptions, and the evening hours of the elevator and the undercroft, are on the Park Service's hours page. Should a ranger on the steps contradict anything written here, believe the ranger first and write to us second.

## The stops

### 1. The east front and its thirty-six columns

Henry Bacon (1866–1924), architect; frieze, cornice and attic carved by Ernest C. Bairstow · 1914–1922 · Colorado Yule marble; 36 fluted Doric columns, each 44 feet tall with a base diameter of 7 feet 5 inches, around a colonnade 188 feet 4 inches long on the east and west sides · The plaza at the foot of the main steps, east side, between the Reflecting Pool and the memorial, facing west

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/lincoln-memorial/en/east-front.mp3?v=1046194 (131 s)

Look for:
- Count the columns across the east front: twelve. The full ring of 36 runs all the way round, one for each state of 1865.
- Two bands of names: the 36 states with their dates of entry in the frieze just above the columns, and the 48 states of 1922 in the attic at the top.
- The pale seated figure through the centre gap in the columns, in an entrance that was once meant to be closed with a bronze and glass grille.
- The Alaska and Hawaii plaque set into the plaza, for the two states the attic had no room for.

You are on the plaza with the Reflecting Pool at your back, looking west up the steps, and the whole east front is in front of you. Count the columns across it. Twelve. They carry on round all four sides, thirty-six in total, and that number is the first thing Henry Bacon wants you to take in: one column for each state in the Union when Abraham Lincoln died in 1865. Two more stand behind them at the entrance, either side of the gap where you can just make out a pale seated figure in the shadow.

Bacon took the Parthenon in Athens as his model. His reasoning was simple: a memorial to a man who defended democracy should look like the birthplace of democracy. Each column is forty-four feet tall, built up from stacked drums of Colorado Yule marble, and not one of them is quite vertical. They lean very slightly inward, and so do the walls. The ancient Greeks did the same, because a building with perfectly straight sides seems to bulge at the top. What reads to you as square is a careful lean.

Now lift your eyes to the band just above the columns. Those are the names of the thirty-six states, each with the year it joined the Union, separated by carved double wreaths. Go higher, to the attic at the very top, and there is a second list: the forty-eight states that existed when the memorial was dedicated in 1922. That left two latecomers with nowhere to go, so Alaska and Hawaii got a plaque instead, set into the paving of this plaza. All that carving, the wreaths, the eagles, the festoons, was cut by a Washington architectural sculptor named Ernest Bairstow.

Not everyone wanted a temple. Plenty of people thought Bacon's design far too grand for a man of Lincoln's humble character and argued for a simple log cabin shrine. Others said the site was a swamp. They had a point: this is filled land, and before any marble went up, workers poured a hundred and twenty-two concrete piers down to bedrock, then a second layer of piers and concrete arches on top of those. The white building in front of you stands on a buried forest of concrete.

Work began on the twelfth of February 1914, Lincoln's birthday. As late as 1920 there was still a plan to close that entrance with a bronze and glass grille. It was dropped and the portal left open. The memorial has been on the back of the five-dollar bill since 1929, and from 1959 to 2008 it was on the back of the one-cent coin as well, with the statue showing through the columns.

### 2. The landing where King spoke

Steps and landing by Henry Bacon (1866–1924); the inscription engraved in 2003 for the fortieth anniversary of the speech · 1922; inscription 2003 · Pink Milford granite lower steps and Colorado Yule marble upper steps; 87 steps in all from the Reflecting Pool to the chamber, 58 of them between the plaza and the chamber · Main steps, east side: the landing below the white marble steps, where the engraved stone is set in the paving

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/lincoln-memorial/en/king-landing.mp3?v=1015474 (127 s)

Look for:
- The engraved stone itself, in the paving of the landing: five short lines, the first of them I HAVE A DREAM and the last the date, August 28, 1963.
- The change of stone under your feet: pink granite below you, white Colorado marble on the upper steps.
- The two tripods on the buttresses either side, carved by the Piccirilli brothers with lions, eagles, pine cones and corn.

Climb the lower flights and stop on the landing below the white marble steps. Look at the paving under your shoes. Set into the paving here is a stone cut with five short lines: I have a dream, Martin Luther King Junior, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. It marks the spot where he stood, eighteen steps below the statue, and it was engraved in 2003, for the fortieth anniversary.

About a quarter of a million people filled the ground you have just crossed that day. The march was not meant to end here. It was the labour leader Walter Reuther who talked the other organisers into moving it from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, because it would seem less threatening to Congress and because it felt right to speak under Lincoln's gaze. The police liked the choice for a reason of their own: the site is surrounded on three sides by water, so any trouble would be easy to contain. King spoke a hundred years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and his speech deliberately echoed the Gettysburg Address, which you will find carved on a wall inside.

He was not the first to turn these steps into a platform. In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let the contralto Marian Anderson sing at their Constitution Hall because of her race. At Eleanor Roosevelt's suggestion, the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, offered her these steps instead, and on Easter Sunday she sang here to seventy-five thousand people and a nationwide radio audience. The Park Service says that was when the memorial stopped being only a place to venerate Lincoln and became a place about extending freedom to every American. In 1947 Harry Truman came here to become the first president to address the NAACP.

The contradiction is older than any of them. At the dedication in May 1922, prominent African American guests arrived to find they had been assigned a segregated section, guarded by Marines. The keynote that day was given by Robert Moton, president of the Tuskegee Institute, who spoke for equality among the races to a largely segregated audience.

Before you climb on, look to either side. Each of the two buttresses flanking the steps carries an eleven-foot tripod of pink Tennessee marble, carved by the Piccirilli brothers, with lions, eagles, pine cones and corn worked into it. Notice too that the stone changes under your feet, from pink granite below to white Colorado marble above. And if you count the steps from the edge of the Reflecting Pool up to the chamber, you get eighty-seven, which is four score and seven.

### 3. Daniel Chester French's seated Lincoln

Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), sculptor; carved by the Piccirilli brothers under his supervision · Carved from 1918; assembled in the chamber in late 1919 and early 1920 · Georgia white marble in 28 pieces, 19 feet tall and 19 feet wide, on a Tennessee marble pedestal 10 feet high · Central chamber, facing the statue from the entrance between the columns

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/lincoln-memorial/en/seated-lincoln.mp3?v=1119546 (140 s)

Look for:
- The two hands: the left clenched, the right open with the index finger lifted a little from the chair. French worked from casts of Lincoln's own hands.
- The bundled rods, the fasces, that form the arms of the chair, and the flag draped over its back.
- The joins between the 28 blocks of marble, which the Park Service calls nearly invisible. Try to find one.
- Royal Cortissoz's five lines on the wall above his head.

Walk in between the columns and let your eyes adjust to the shade. He is bigger than you expected, and that was a late decision. The first plan was a statue ten feet tall. By 1918 it was clear that would look lost in a chamber sixty feet high, so the size was doubled, and steel supports went in under the floor to carry the extra weight. What you are looking at is nineteen feet from head to foot, and just as wide. If he stood up, he would be twenty-eight feet tall.

It is not one stone, either. Daniel Chester French designed it, and the Piccirilli brothers, six of them, who ran a marble workshop in New York with their father, carved it from twenty-eight blocks of white Georgia marble. The pieces fit so closely that the Park Service calls the seams nearly invisible. See if you can find one.

Now look at the hands, because that is where French put his argument. He studied photographs, eyewitness descriptions and the casts Leonard Volk made of Lincoln's own hands in 1860. The left hand, the one on your right, is clenched. The right hand is open and relaxed, the index finger lifted a little off the chair. The Park Service reads them as strength and compassion: the determination to fight the war to its end, and the wish to bring the South back without revenge. Carl Sandburg said Lincoln was made of steel and velvet, and this is that sentence in marble.

Two stories about this statue will reach you sooner or later, so here is where they stand. People say the face of Robert E. Lee is carved into the back of Lincoln's head, gazing across the river towards his old home. The Park Service says no, and has a survey photograph from 1995 showing it is only hair. People also say the hands are signing his initials, A and L, in American Sign Language. The Park Service says not really, and explains where the idea comes from: French had earlier made a statue of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet teaching a young girl the letter A, and in that one he carved the signs on purpose. Some historians think he might have meant it here too.

Under the hands, the arms of the chair are bundles of rods tied together, the Roman fasces: one rod is weak alone, a bundle is strong. Behind him, a flag is draped over the back of the chair.

Above his head are five lines by the art critic Royal Cortissoz. Several people tried to improve the wording before it was carved, and none of them could, and Cortissoz apparently thought it the proudest thing he ever did. Then look up at the ceiling. Those pale panels are Alabama marble soaked in wax so the daylight glows through them. Even that was not enough light for the statue, and in 1929 floodlights were hidden in the ceiling.

### 4. The Gettysburg Address and Guerin's Emancipation mural

Mural by Jules Guerin (1866–1946); lettering cut by Ernest C. Bairstow; eagles and palm fronds by Evelyn Beatrice Longman (1874–1954) · Address given 19 November 1863; carved and painted during the building of the memorial, 1914–1922 · Indiana limestone wall; canvas mural 60 feet long by 12 feet high, in oil paint mixed with white wax and kerosene · South chamber, on the south wall, to your left as you face the statue

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/lincoln-memorial/en/south-chamber.mp3?v=1002727 (125 s)

Look for:
- Justice, in the left-hand group of the mural, seated on a chair identical to the one Lincoln sits on in the statue.
- The winged Angel of Truth at the centre of the mural, releasing the enslaved figures around her.
- Longman's two eagles at the foot of the inscription and the tall palm fronds either side of it.
- Across the central chamber on the north wall, the Unity mural, where the fourth figure from the left of the Angel of Truth is Henry Bacon.

Turn to your left as you face the statue and walk into the south chamber, past the tall Ionic columns. There are eight of them, each fifty feet high, in two rows of four, and they are what divide the inside of this building into three chambers.

On the wall in front of you is the whole of the Gettysburg Address, cut into Indiana limestone. Lincoln gave it on the nineteenth of November 1863, at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery on a battlefield that had cost more than fifty thousand casualties, the bloodiest battle of the whole war. He was very nearly an afterthought. The main speaker was Edward Everett, whose address alone took up more than two hours. Lincoln was invited late, to offer a few appropriate remarks, and he worked to say what he meant in as few words as possible. The result fits on a single panel of this wall.

The letters were cut by Ernest Bairstow, the same carver who did the state names outside. The eagles at the foot of the panel and the palm fronds rising either side of it are by Evelyn Beatrice Longman. She was born poor in a log cabin, like Lincoln, and trained under Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of the statue next door.

Now look up. The long painting above the inscription is Emancipation, by Jules Guerin: sixty feet long, twelve feet high, and it weighs six hundred pounds. This chamber is open to the air, so Guerin mixed kerosene and wax into his paint to protect it from heat and damp. In the centre, the winged Angel of Truth is releasing slaves from their shackles. The group on the left is Justice and Law, and here is the detail almost everyone misses: Justice is sitting on a chair identical to the one Lincoln sits on in the statue. On the right, Immortality stands among Faith, Hope and Charity. The dark cypress trees behind every group stand for eternity.

Guerin was born in Saint Louis the year after the Civil War ended, and Bacon first hired him to paint watercolours of the memorial before a stone of it existed.

Before you leave, look across the central chamber to the far north wall. It is this wall's mirror: Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, given on the fourth of March 1865, with its malice toward none and charity for all, under a second Guerin mural called Unity. The Park Service says the fourth figure from the left of the Angel of Truth in that painting is Henry Bacon himself, the architect, painted into his own building. Lincoln was killed forty-one days after he gave that speech.

### 5. The view east, down the Reflecting Pool

Axis set by the Senate Park Commission of 1901–1902; Reflecting Pool designed by Henry Bacon (1866–1924) · Site chosen 1902; pool finished soon after the 1922 dedication · Reflecting Pool built approximately 2,028 feet long and 167 feet wide (618 by 51 m), running east towards the Washington Monument · Top of the main steps, in front of the east colonnade, facing east down the Reflecting Pool

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/landmarks/lincoln-memorial/en/view-east.mp3?v=1031775 (129 s)

Look for:
- The Washington Monument straight ahead, with the Capitol dome lined up behind it: the sight line the memorial was placed to hold.
- The long rows of elms on both sides of the pool, part of the memorial's own landscape.
- Turn round once: the statue looks exactly along this line.

Walk back out between the columns and stop at the top of the steps. Now face the way Lincoln faces. That is the whole point of this last stop: the statue was set to look straight down this line, and the view is part of the memorial.

Directly ahead is the Washington Monument, and behind it, on its hill, the dome of the Capitol. Just short of the dome, at the foot of Capitol Hill and two miles from where you stand, there is a memorial to Ulysses S. Grant, facing back this way. The Park Service puts it plainly: Lincoln looks to Grant and Grant looks to Lincoln, with Washington's monument between them. The man who saved the Union in politics, the man who saved it in the field, and the man who helped create it in the middle. Grant's memorial was dedicated in April 1922, a month before this one, with Vice President Calvin Coolidge presiding. None of this is accidental.

There is a private story in the view as well. On the Fourth of July 1848, a young Illinois congressman named Abraham Lincoln went to watch the cornerstone laid for that obelisk. Six years later work on it stopped, at less than a third of its planned height, and when Lincoln came back to Washington as president, both the monument and the new Capitol dome stood unfinished, like the Union itself. From here you can see both of them complete.

The line was drawn long before the building. In 1902 the Senate Park Commission, whose members included Daniel Burnham, Charles McKim, Frederick Law Olmsted Junior and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, proposed a memorial to Lincoln right here, at the edge of the Potomac, as the western end of the National Mall.

The Reflecting Pool, which runs east from the foot of these steps, was Henry Bacon's design too, planned at first as a cross and built as a rectangle about 2,028 feet long and 167 feet wide. It was not ready in time for the dedication and was finished soon afterwards. Between 2010 and 2012 it was rebuilt from the bottom up, on more than two thousand wooden pilings driven into soft, marshy river clay.

And behind you, on the far side of the building, is the answer to this view. Arlington Memorial Bridge crosses the Potomac towards Arlington House, the home of Robert E. Lee, deliberately linking the two men across the river. Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's only surviving son, was a guest of honour at the dedication in 1922. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, within sight of his father's memorial.

## Before you go

2 Lincoln Memorial Circle, NW, Washington, DC, at the west end of the National Mall. There is no gate and no ticket for the memorial itself: walk up the east steps from the Reflecting Pool, or use the elevator, which is to the left of the steps and starts in the lower lobby in the south-east corner of the building.

The closest Metro station is Foggy Bottom-GWU, served by the Blue, Orange and Silver lines, about 0.8 miles away; Smithsonian, on the same three lines, is about 1.2 miles. Several bus routes stop nearby, there are Capital Bikeshare stations close by, and bike racks and scooter parking sit next to the memorial, though riding inside it is not allowed. Parking is limited and mostly metered, with a two-hour limit, along Ohio Drive SW; there are accessible spaces on Daniel Chester French Drive, just south of the memorial.

- The undercroft beneath the chamber, opened on 25 June 2026, is a separate visit with its own timed-entry ticket. Tickets are free, but advance reservations on Recreation.gov carry a $1.00 service fee, open up to 30 days ahead and are released at 11 a.m. each day, with up to six per reservation. Same-day tickets are handed out from 8:45 a.m. at the Korean War Veterans Memorial kiosk on Daniel Chester French Drive, first come, first served, and everyone two and over needs one. You do not need it for anything this guide covers.
- The memorial is open to the public twenty-four hours a day. The elevator, the restrooms and the undercroft keep shorter hours, and the Park Service's hours page lists holiday exceptions, Christmas Day among them, so check it if you are coming early, late or on a public holiday.
- Restrooms are on Daniel Chester French Drive, across the street from the accessible parking spaces. Pets are not allowed in the chamber or the undercroft; service animals are welcome anywhere visitors can go.
- An information panel on the south side of the Memorial Circle plaza has a bronze model of the memorial you can touch and an audio description, and the park brochure is available in braille and as an audio-described download.

Official tickets: https://www.nps.gov/linc/planyourvisit/fees.htm

The Park Service's own guides here are its rangers, whose programs are listed on the National Mall calendar of events and, in the Park Service's words, are always free of charge. Its website carries short recorded Ranger Reflections on the statue, the murals, the inscriptions and the views, the NPS app covers the points of interest nearby, and ASL interpretation can be arranged at no charge if you ask at least three weeks ahead. Narration pinned to the spot you are standing on is the piece missing from that list, and it is what this page gives you: one recording per stop from the plaza to the top step, every word printed under its player.

Official site: https://www.nps.gov/linc/index.htm

## Questions

**Is there a free Lincoln Memorial audio guide?**

Free from the first stop to the last: five narrated stops from the plaza to the view east, each playable straight from this page and each written out underneath. The Park Service adds free ranger programs, listed on its National Mall calendar, and short Ranger Reflections recordings on its website. Anything the five stops walk past, the Chiaro app can tell you about from a single photo.

**Can I listen to the Lincoln Memorial audio guide without a ticket?**

Yes, from the first stop to the last. The Park Service charges no fee for the memorial or its main chamber, so the plaza, the steps, the statue, the south chamber and the view east are all on free ground. The only ticketed part of the building is the undercroft museum on the lower level, which this guide does not enter.

**How much is the official Lincoln Memorial audio guide?**

The Park Service's Lincoln Memorial pages list no paid audio guide. What they offer costs nothing: ranger programs, which the Park Service says are always free of charge, recorded Ranger Reflections on the statue, murals, inscriptions and views at nps.gov/linc, and an audio-described version of the park brochure. The undercroft museum is free as well, though an advance reservation carries a $1.00 service fee.

**Where did Martin Luther King Jr. stand at the Lincoln Memorial?**

On the landing below the white marble steps, eighteen steps below the statue. A stone engraved in 2003, for the fortieth anniversary of the speech, marks the spot, and the Park Service's own visitor page tells you to look for it on the way up. It is the second stop on this page.

**Is the Lincoln Memorial ever closed?**

The memorial itself is open around the clock. For a holiday or a late visit, the Park Service's hours page is where to check the exceptions, Christmas Day among them, and when the elevator, restrooms and undercroft shut for the evening.

**Is there an elevator up to the statue?**

Yes. It is to the left of the steps as you face the memorial and starts in the lower lobby, in the south-east corner of the building. Otherwise it is 58 steps from the plaza up to the chamber, and 87 from the edge of the Reflecting Pool.

## Continue in the app

Point Chiaro at anything at the Lincoln Memorial.

These five stops keep to a single line through the building, and the memorial keeps going on every side of it: two friezes of state names outside, a second mural with the architect painted into it, the Potomac and Arlington off the west colonnade, a century of speeches on the stairs. Choose a carved wreath, a line of the Second Inaugural or a figure in Guerin's paint, take its picture, and Chiaro explains who carved, cut or painted it and why the architects wanted it there, and keeps taking follow-ups for as long as you care to ask.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=lincoln-memorial-md&mt=8