Arlington National Cemetery Welcome Center — Attraction in Arlington

✨September 6, 2025 - We visited the Arlington National Cemetery and entered it by going through its Welcome Center building. So much to say about the Arlington Cemetery. Before we visited, we went to the site online to see if there was certain procedures & etiquette required. They state online to stay hydrated and that only water was allowed in the cemetery. You can bring your own or purchase bottles of water in the cemetery. Dress code is required for certain events in the cemetery. I suggest wearing appropriate clothing for a museum & weather as a sign of respect - nothing risque or inappropriate. This review is focused on its Welcome Center.

Entrance in the Welcome Center and Arlington National Cemetery is free. The building is spacious and very well maintained. You get an immediate sense of arrival and a grand entrance into the cemetery when you approach the Welcome Center. Throughout the building you can see the history and information about the Arlington Cemetery. I didn’t have time to read everything about the cemetery in the Welcome Center, yet I found the photos & immense data impressive.

The staff there are very professional, formal, and efficient in their services. Restrooms are clean & on the left side of the building. The tram tour provided by the Welcome Center in on the right side. A water area to fill your bottles or flasks is available in the center by the service desk to purchase tickets for the tram tour.

I recommend downloading the ANC explorer app on your phone to get an interactive map of the cemetery & helpful information. This is information about this app on their website:

Arlington National Cemetery's app, ANC Explorer, enables families, visitors and the public to locate gravesites, events or other points of interest throughout the cemetery; view front-and-back headstone photos and points of interest; and receive directions to these locations. The latest version also includes self-guided tours, easy access to general information, and provides the ability to save searched burial records to a mobile device.

For travelers with the National Parks Passport Book, I recommend getting your Passport book National Parks stamped for Arlington Cemetery & the sticker for the book at the gift shop in the Welcome Center. I bought the Passport book stickers, got some stamps, postcards, and other items at the gift shop there.

By the Welcome Center is the Military Women’s Memorial. It is a small walk from the Welcome Center. I strongly recommend going there. They have a museum and gift shop inside the memorial building. The views at the top of the building are spectacular. We took an elevator to get to that site.

They have a tram tour you can purchase at The Welcome Center. I strongly recommend that you purchase this tour. They do give military discount. Our tickets were $11.50 each - for one adult. The tram tour encompasses a very detailed historic tour of the cemetery as you ride around memorable graves and sites. It stops at 7-10 places. You can hop on and off at each stop. We rode the tram all over the cemetery twice and hopped off only at one site to see the changing of the guard at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The tour is a great way to see and learn as much as you can of the cemetery in one day and offers efficient transportation. We had three different tour guides. The first two were very informative and highlighted impressive information about the cemetery. The last tour guide had a great sense of humor yet his voice was hoarse & difficult to understand. Overall, the tram tour was a...

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the most important places for any American visiting the capitol to visit.

Whether you come to see the graves that everyone knows or see the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier or you simply want to walk around and try to appreciate the price that men and women have paid over the years, Arlington is a true treasure.

The first thing to remember when visiting here is respect. Almost everyday there are services being performed for families who have lost loved ones.

Taking the tram tour is a great way to check things out or get started. I took it to it's first stop and then starred walking from there.

There are too many people of note whose graves I wanted to see to even attempt to talk about here but I can list a few highlights.

The grave of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She doesn't actually have her grave marker up yet but she has taken her place on Supreme Court hill with so many other fine justices.

Joe Louis and Lee Marvin are right next to each other, and while I doubt they ever met in life, in death they may make up the toughest 1-2 punch in Arlington.

And John Glenn. For having achieved so much in life, he has the standard soldiers tombstone with nothing to set him apart from everyone else in his section. A humble hero.

There are so many graves to see and people to honor. I took a when day and walked around.

I definitely recommend downloading the app for the cemetery the night before your visit and take a look at it and learn how to use it to help find...

Besides teaching kids about respect and history, it’s important for all of us to experience it. We visited the Arlington National Cemetery for the first time on Memorial Day/2021. Maybe everything turned more meaningful to us this year, and honoring those who we lost to defend the freedom we enjoy today, on Memorial Day, was a greater experience than we expected. We were humbled to be able to experience the change in guards at the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier. While leaving the location, we passed by and stopped to pay our appreciation to the soldier who had just been dismissed from duty. He took the time to stop, talk to our kids and explain why he does what he does and that made a huge impact on my kids. We also lucked out to be in the right place at the right time and saw the President’s motorcade AND President Biden and Dr. Jill waved at us! This was an experience like no other! The Cemetery is beautifully kept, well organized and we advise taking the tour trolley (the kind that you can get off, explore the area, hip on the next trolley and so on…) to visit more distant areas, super worth it as they are always telling us historical facts. So far, this is the best cultural trip our family has done. Worth it every...