VACATIONS MADE EASY : DESTINATIONS : WASHINGTON DC : EVENT CALENDAR
Columbus Day in Washington DC
Honoring the Explorer
Washington DC honors and celebrates the achievements of Christopher Columbus with a national wreath laying ceremony on Columbus Day, on the 2nd Monday of October every year. On this day, Embassies of Italy and Spain and the general public lay wreaths at the base of the Columbus Memorial Statue located at Union Station at Massachusetts Ave. & 1st St. The memorial is a large fountain with carvings of a native American, an elderly European, the figure of "Discovery" on the prow of a ship, and a globe. Everything that is quintessentially Columbus, a tribute to the true discoverer of the world.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is credited with "discovering" America in 1492. To mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus' voyage, in 1892, President Benjamin Harrison declared the first official Columbus Day holiday. And it's been a tradition well kept ever since then with a lot of fun and dance added to it in the right spirit of course. For more than a decade, there was a week long festivity of dancing and food and wine to coincide with this event which became a hot point for tourists and Columbus scholars alike. In fact, the Taste of DC was one of Washington's largest food and music festivals, held over the Columbus Day Weekend, which has now given way to a host of mega & mini events, all about the celebration of life.
