In the vibrant restaurants and bars, the energy and attitude are palpable. And if you want to understand America and its present policies, you need to see its dreams made stone in the great monuments of Washington.

The Lincoln Memorial (1922) alone is worth the trip to Washington. It’s the Taj Mahal of America, bringing grown men and women to their knees, moved without comprehending quite why. Martin Luther King chose the Lincoln Memorial as the place to give his “I have a dream” speech in 1963: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation... it came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

I first visited the Lincoln Memorial when I was five, on a humid summer day, and still remember leaning my back against the cold marble and looking up at the sad, haunted face of Lincoln as he sat on his immense marble throne. Later, when I lived in Washington and took visiting friends, as I walked up the steep steps and saw Lincoln, I felt a twist in my heart and tears in my eyes.

This time, the effect was the same.

He was still waiting there, so troubled and huge in his armchair, gazing down at the Reflecting Pool and beyond at the domed Capitol building. The two miles between the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial, referred to as the National Mall, is the heart of the city. Lincoln’s spirit seems to dominate with both frailty and strength. Even his great weary hands, resting on the sides of the armchair, somehow suggest the hopes and limitations of humanity.

This and the other great old monuments take you to the core of America. Like great books, they are different each time you visit them.

The Jefferson Memorial (1943) is elegantly set by the waters of the Tidal Basin (with words from the Declaration of Independence etched in the walls: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”). It’s a temple of marble columns, a columned rotunda, curving round Thomas Jefferson’s 19ft bronze statue, looking out towards the White House. If Lincoln’s memorial suggests effort and decency and vision, to me Jefferson’s is a tribute to the imagination and sheer vigour and glamour of the country.

The Roosevelt Memorial, opened in 1997, was new to me. Up early from jet lag, knowing none of the museums opens until 10, I visited it very early, and there were no guards there. Its simplicity and grace were calming, especially as there is intense security throughout the city.

The memorial has 7 acres designed as a series of contemplative courtyards, modest and different in style to the temple-like memorials to Lincoln and Jefferson, but powerful and quietly impressive. The first courtyard contains a small statue of Roosevelt himself, sitting in a wheelchair, and it is a shock to see a figure from the American past shown with such honesty. Each courtyard combines words carved in stones with figures tracing the story of each of his terms as president, the broken stones depicting the chaos of war.

“I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded... I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed... I hate war.”

I was so moved that I returned that night. The moon reflected into the water, the floodlights glittering on flecks of silver in the pink granite and illuminating the engraved words, including: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

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