Washington, D.C. Live Cam

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The District of Columbia (D.C.) was created largely out of wilderness to be the seat of the federal government, which moved from Philadelphia to the unfinished city of Washington in 1800. Today, Washington is best known as a spacious, handsome city of stately public buildings, imposing monuments, and wide, tree-lined thoroughfares. Over the years the city of Washington became coextensive with the District of Columbia, a federal territory set aside in 1791 as the site of the new capital.

Washington is the home of hundreds of thousands of people and is the central city of a metropolitan area that includes parts of the states of Maryland and Virginia. Washington, D.C., has an area of 68 square miles (177 sq km). However, the original cession of land from the states of Maryland and Virginia was 100 square miles (259 sq km), or 10 miles square. The original shape was that of a diamond, with the top point of the diamond forming the northern corner of the district. Washington is one of the few planned cities in the United States.