The 355|Lincoln Memorial — Where the Film Says "Washington" Without a Word

Every spy film needs one shot that means Washington, and The 355 takes its establishing photography on the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial and the ground around it doing the work of a title card. Nothing is staged here — the second unit shoots the city as it is, which is why the transitions between Paris, London and the CIA end of the story land without a caption.

The memorial has been finished since 1922. Henry Bacon built it as a Doric temple with thirty-six columns, one for each state in the Union at Lincoln's death, and Daniel Chester French's seated figure inside is nineteen feet high and cut from twenty-eight blocks of Georgia marble fitted so precisely that the joins take real effort to find. The Gettysburg Address is carved on the south wall, the Second Inaugural on the north. On the steps, eighteen down from the top, an inscription marks where Martin Luther King Jr. stood in 1963.

It is open every day, all hours, and there is no ticket. Rangers are on duty from early morning until late.

Go after eleven at night. The chamber is lit, the crowds have gone, the Reflecting Pool holds the Washington Monument upside down in one unbroken line, and you can hear your own footsteps on the marble — the closest the city gets to the emptiness the film is implying.

Location photo via Wikimedia Commons.