If you’ve always thought that mail carriers and the postal service were uninteresting, think again. Spend an afternoon at the National Postal Museum, located just a mile from the Newseum Residences, and you’ll find a surprisingly cool amount of artifacts and information about the history of the mail.
The National Postal Museum is a Smithsonian museum, so you know that it is of the highest caliber. The William H. Gross Stamp Gallery is a stamp collector’s dream exhibit. It’s the largest gallery in the world of its kind, with more than 20,000 objects for visitors to look through and learn about. Elsewhere in the museum, visitors can learn about different transportation options for mail delivery and efficiencies in the postal system, like the institution of personal mailboxes. As with all Smithsonian museums, the National Postal Museum is free of charge to visit and open every day of the year except for Christmas Day.