Every September, the District laces up for Walking Town, a nine-day festival offering scores of free tours across the city’s eight wards. The outings focus on everything from Capitol Hill scandals to cemetery funerary art, offering a chance to exercise and explore new parts of Washington, D.C., says Dania M. Jolley, the deputy chief of staff and cultural affairs at Events DC, which sponsors the tradition.
Celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, the festival attracts locals and in-the-know visitors. Some tours—like “Black Broadway,” which focuses on the U Street/Shaw neighborhood, and a Watergate neighborhood bike tour—are so popular they may run several times. One notable stroll is presented in Spanish and covers the Latino history of the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. All outings are led by historians, licensed guides, or community leaders and offered September 14 through 22.
Guide Melanie LaForce says Walking Town allows her to research and develop new tours, like the ones she has offered on the French influence in the District and how First Lady Helen Herron Taft brought cherry blossom trees to the Tidal Basin. “You go into the records, the archives, and the journals, and suddenly Washington, D.C, is not just a fishbowl of politics. It’s a dynamic, culturally wonderful city that has these really cool stories.”
