audio tour smithsonian natural history

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History In-App Audio Tour

• Downloadable multimedia audio tour on the WeGoTrip app (in English)
• Offline functionality, audio narration, and written text explanations
• Detailed route from stop to stop with live GPS map on your smartphone
• Personal guide — you will get the tour on the mobile app
• Headphones — you should bring your own
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 10th St. & Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20560, USA The tour will start nease Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
• Not wheelchair accessible
• Near public transportation
• Confirmation will be received at time of booking
• The mobile app is available on the App Store and Google Play and works offline
• Offline Mode: Download tours in advance to listen without WiFi
• Location-Aware: GPS map allows you to enjoy the tour without getting lost
• Most travelers can participate
• After payment, you will receive an SMS and an email with detailed instructions. Download the app from the App Store or Google Play. All you need is a mobile phone. Internet access is not required
• This is a private tour/activity. Only your group will participate
• For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours in advance of the start date of the experience.
• You'll start at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History 10th St. & Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20560, USA The tour will start nease Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. See address & details
• 1 Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Stop: 2 hours Learn the history of the planet through an immersive experience of walking through the interactive halls of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. navigated by your personal audio guide. At the first floor of the museum, you will see the huge African Bush Elephant and learn the culture of African people. Here, you will face the mega-tooth shark and dive into the ocean along with the blue whales. Dinosaur lovers will be excited to see giants like Tyrannosaurus rex, Diplodocus and many more. The second floor will take you to the world of bones where you will see skeletons of monkeys, giraffes, snakes, turtles and many more. Critical Distance augmented reality experience will give you a possibility to swim with the orcas and “see” the underwater world through their eyes. Egyptian mummies will "tell" you the story of the most ancient civilization. Read more
• You'll return to the starting point

• LA_Lettie 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles En Pluribus Unum The Washington, DC Capital Building is one of the most inspiring places to visit. The free tour begins with a video followed by a guided walk through the building. Get your tickets before you go. You can get a delicious lunch in the cafeteria. I recommend the BBQ pulled pork sandwich and any of the many desserts. Warning, everything is “DC prices” but I found the meal delicious and welcomed the rest. Read more Written July 22, 2023

More to explore in Washington DC

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as wait time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History In-App Audio Tour provided by WeGoTrip Washington DC | In-App Audio Tours

Visit Planning

• Plan Your Visit
• Event Calendar
• Current Exhibitions
• Family Activities
• Guidelines and Policies

Access Programs

• Accessibility
• Dementia Programs
• Verbal Description Tours

Explore Art and Artists

Collection highlights.

• Search Artworks
• New Acquisitions
• Search Artists
• Search Women Artists

Something Fun

• Which Artist Shares Your Birthday?
• Exhibitions
• Upcoming Exhibitions
• Traveling Exhibitions
• Past Exhibitions

Art Conservation

• Lunder Conservation Center

Research Resources

• Research and Scholars Center
• Nam June Paik Archive Collection
• Photograph Study Collection
• National Art Inventories Databases
• Save Outdoor Sculpture!
• Researching Your Art

Publications

• American Art Journal
• Catalogs and Books
• Scholarly Symposia
• Publication Prizes

Fellows and Interns

• Fellowship Programs
• List of Fellows and Scholars
• Internship Programs

Featured Resource

Learn from Home

• Resources for Learning at Home

• Support the Museum
• Corporate Patrons
• Gift Planning
• Donating Artworks
• Join the Director's Circle
• Join SAAM Creatives

Become a member

Photo by Mary Tait

SAAM teamed up with the digital firm Smartify to create a series of audio guides that deepen the visitor experience, both in our galleries and online. A  tour of the modern and contemporary collections features new and archival audio in which more than a dozen artists talk about what inspired their work as well as commentary by SAAM’s Head Curator Randy Griffey. Insights into the work of Alma Thomas by Melissa Ho, curator of twentieth-century art, is available to complement the exhibition Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas .

Art speaks of who we are at our very best. And you go into a museum and you can see that over and over again, that divine spark, that humanness, that heart.   Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation)

Two additional tours, created in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, provide insights into the remarkable history of the museums’ shared historic Greek Revival building and feature highlights of selected iconic works in our respective collections. A joint tour for families and a tour featuring works by Black artists are in development. 

Visitors also can create a personalized, self-guided tour by answering a few simple questions about particular interests and choosing how much time to allow to explore the collection. The public can access these tours online or in the galleries either through the mobile site or by downloading the Smartify app. Tours are available in English, Spanish, American Sign Language, and Descriptive Audio for visitors with low and impaired vision. 

Recent Posts

Our last exhibit walks us through the lives of many animals we will immediately recognize. After the last ice age Mammals rose up to rule the earth. 

Enjoy your trip across all five continents. The diversity of Mammals is astounding. Their relatively large brains have helped them to rule the animal kindom.

Hit next then you're back where our tour began.

• The Rotunda LISTEN
• Fossils LISTEN
• Dinosaurs - Carnivores LISTEN
• Dinosaurs - Herbivores LISTEN
• Ice Age LISTEN
• African Culture LISTEN
• The Ocean Hall LISTEN
• Human Origins LISTEN
• Thanks for Visiting LISTEN

Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

SMITHSONIAN BOOKS

You Don’t Need to Be Indoors to Enjoy a Smithsonian Museum. Try the Gardens!

Experience “living museums” in the nation’s capital

Carole Ottesen

S. Dillon Ripley (1913-2001), the eighth secretary of the Smithsonian, recognized a golden opportunity in the landscapes around the museums. Remembering the museums and European pleasure gardens he had visited in his youth, he was determined to develop surroundings for the Smithsonian museums that would be as remarkable as their interiors. To turn mundane grounds into display gardens and ultimately to establish horticulture as a part of the institution's research and education efforts, Ripley created the Office of Horticulture in 1972. Its first director, James R. Buckler, was a visionary who was blessed with a can-do assistant director, Jack Monday, and a capable staff that embarked on the greening of the Smithsonian.

In preparation for America's Bicentennial in 1976, one of the Office of Horticulture's first efforts was a Victorian parterre, modeled after an example in Henderson's Picturesque Gardens and Ornamental Gardening (1884). The extravagant Victorian Garden was the popular forerunner of the parterre in the Haupt Garden. In conjunction with the parterre display, Buckler acquired Victorian furniture and other artifacts, which became the nucleus of what is now the Garden Furnishings and Horticultural Artifacts Collections.

A Guide to Smithsonian Gardens

A beautifully illustrated guide to the colorful gardens that surround the Smithsonian museums along the National Mall, each unique in its design, plant materials, and purpose. Many visitors are surprised to learn that the Smithsonian Institution includes extensive gardens and landscape areas. All...

At first the Office of Horticulture was housed in a Quonset hut in the South Yard, along with a greenhouse in which employees propagated bedding materials and exotic species. As plans to renovate existing gardens and add new ones mushroomed, the available greenhouse space on the Mall was quickly rendered inadequate. Greenhouses on the historic grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home were leased in 1975. Soon tropical plants began to adorn the museums' interiors. Lawn areas around the museums gave way to masses of flowers, and vacant spaces sprouted gardens. The unit burgeoned into three interrelated branches, each with its own manifold responsibilities: Grounds Management Operations, Greenhouse Nursery Operations, and Horticulture Collections Management and Education.

The establishment of the Office of Horticulture coincided with a great boom in gardening in the United States that began in the 1970s. By 1986 a Gallup Poll listed gardening as the number one outdoor activity in American households, ahead of golf, jogging, boating, tennis, and swimming. Horticulture at the Smithsonian grew in tandem with the surging interest around the country.

Buoyed by the immense popularity of gardening, which spawned interest in everything from vegetables to native plants, the Smithsonian began to regard its growing roster of gardens collectively as a single botanic garden, one that is educational as well as ornamental. By 2010, when the Horticulture Services Division (successor to the Office of Horticulture) was renamed Smithsonian Gardens, its mission had also been further refined: to enrich the Smithsonian experience through exceptional gardens, horticultural exhibits, collections, and education. Not only the gardens outside, but numerous exhibitions within the walls of the museums are also informed by plants from the Smithsonian Garden’s extensive collections and collaborations between horticulturalists and curators.

As individual as the museums they enhance, the gardens of the Smithsonian are wonderfully varied. The exuberant plantings of the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden testify to the enormous range of ornamental plants available today, a happy result of the gardening boom. A stroll on a summer day through this garden, located between the Arts and Industries building and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, presents dozens of refreshing combinations of herbaceous and woody, temperate and tropical plants. The Heirloom and Victory Gardens at the National Museum of American History arise from a distinctly American past and mirror the nation's Zeitgeist at different times in its history. The Heirloom Garden is nostalgic, filled with the homey flowers cherished in simpler times. The Victory Garden commemorates the patriotic, communal spirit at home while World War II was fought half a world away.

From the more recent past, the Butterfly Habitat Garden at the National Museum of Natural History reflects a better understanding of processes in the natural world, while the terrace garden at the National Air and Space Museum is an eco-smart response to local growing conditions. The contemporary works in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden are enhanced by complementary plantings that serve as transcendent gallery walls. The Kogod Courtyard at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture offers an urban retreat under an overhead canopy that is a triumph of modern technology.

Other Smithsonian gardens are reminiscent of Old World models. The Freer Courtyard was inspired by the medieval courtyards that Charles Lang Freer visited on his travels in Britain. The Haupt Garden's parterre derives from a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French garden style that spread throughout Europe, died out, was revived in Victorian England, and became a popular exhibit at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. The Kathrine Dulin Folger Rose Garden is a timeless classic that might as likely be found on the grounds of an ancient monastery as on the National Mall.

Some gardens break with Western gardening prototypes. The Moongate Garden at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery honors the traditions of Asia, while the Fountain Garden at the National Museum of African Art incorporates conventions from Islam's long history. The landscape surrounding the National Museum of the American Indian harkens back four hundred years to a time before there was a European presence in America and uses the region's raw materials to create a uniquely contemporary garden.

Still other gardens farther from the Mall offer respite from urban settings. The National Zoological Park in Northwest Washington, D.C., presents thousands of plants and animals in a natural environment in order to communicate the importance of nature to the welfare of both people and animals. The Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum offers access to what was once one of Manhattan's largest private gardens.

Despite the wide diversity of the Smithsonian gardens, all benefit from environmentally sensitive practices that horticulturists employ each and every day. Handsome natives grow in most of the gardens. Landscaping with native or climatically suitable plants provides an environmentally appropriate and arresting alternative to traditional landscaping. In a similar vein, Smithsonian Gardens practices integrated pest management as a way of controlling garden pests using methods that are the least hazardous to people and the environment. These are just a few of the countless elements in the Smithsonian gardens that inspire and set examples for visitors from all over the world.

Carefully planned to advance the mission and enhance the experience of the museum it surrounds, each of the Smithsonian gardens is distinctive and ever evolving. Most are situated along the Mall, a prominent feature in a plan that was executed when the city of Washington was little more than a magnificent intention. All together, these Smithsonian gardens compose a living history of gardening in America.

A Guide to Smithsonian Gardens  is available from Smithsonian Books. Visit  Smithsonian Books’ website  to learn more about its publications and a full list of titles. 

Excerpt from  A Guide to Smithsonian Gardens by Carole Ottesen © 2011 by the Smithsonian Institution

A Note to our Readers Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission.

Ocean Explorer Theater Spotlight

Friday, March 29, 2024, 11am – 12pm EDT

Looking for a deeper dive into ocean topics like animal adaptations, behavior, biodiversity, or ecology? Come and join one of our Ocean Educators in Explorer Theater to watch short videos, explore specimens, and learn more about our blue planet!

Free and open to the public

1st Floor, Explorer Theater in the Sant Ocean Hall

Natural History Museum

Experience More

Friday, March 29, 2024, 7 – 9pm EDT

Tuesday, April 2, 2024, 10:30am – 12pm EDT

• Smithsonian Institution
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Host an Event