The Pentagon

Located in Arlington, just on the outskirts of Washington D.C, the pentagon rises like a true behemoth from the ground. This building is very plain and not particularly pleasing to the eye, although from an aerial view the pentagon shape can be fully appreciated. However, it is not on the outside of the building that attracts visitors, but the inside.

As the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, this building represents the U.S military and C.I.A. The statistics behind this building is impressive: each of its five sides is longer than the U.S Capitol building, it is the highest capacity office building in the world (more than 26,000 people work here), its five sides is supported by five floors, and each floor has five ring corridors. The grand total of corridors within this building is an astonishing 17.5 miles. This massive building only took 16 months to compete in 1941.

The open area inside the Pentagon is called “ground zero” because during the Cold War, people at the Pentagon just assumed it would be targeted by Soviet Bombs. The Soviet Spy Satellites were thoroughly confused as to the tiny building situated in the middle of the open space and assumed THAT was the actual, important building and that the five sides surrounding it was just a façade. Their reasoning was as such: several people would go in the morning and linger for hours in this tiny building (which they assumed was an elevator leading down into the Earth), and people would constantly come and go from it. In reality, this tiny building is a hot dog stand and snack bar! That’s it! It’s called “Ground Zero Café” and it is still there today. Of course people were constantly coming and going! After the Cold War ended, Russia and the U.S had a really good laugh over that one. Hurry and visit that before it changes into a newer, modern restaurant, scheduled to take place around 2010.

Sixty years to the day that the Pentagon had its groundbreaking ceremony, the one of the planes in the September 11th attacks crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, killing everyone on board and over 100 people in the Pentagon. This wing of the Pentagon is fully functional again, and the Pentagon Memorial is scheduled to be completed by September of 2008.

As part of the bicentennial celebrations, the Pentagon opened its doors and conducted supervised tours through certain wings. However, after 9/11, the tours are no longer open to just anyone that trapezes up to the Pentagon. Tours are now generally offered only to Veterans and their families, educational organizations and other pre-arranged groups by reservation only. There are absolutely NO individual tours. Reservations are critical to tour the Pentagon. All of the guided tours are free though. Inside, expect to learn about some of the most illustrious figures in our history, some military trivia, and a basic understanding of what happens daily in one of the world’s largest office buildings (to put it in perspective, it has 3 times the amount of space of the Empire State Building in New York).

If you have a tour, or want to arrange a tour with the Pentagon, we have many places to dine and stay in Arlington featured in our “Places to Stay” and “Places to Eat” option on our homepage.

To visit the Pentagon’s official page, click on this to be escorted to their page.





Virginia Tourists Guide - The Pentagon - Northern Virginia