Embassy Row

[2] Of the 177 diplomatic missions in the city, the majority are located on or near Embassy Row, including those of Italy, Australia, India, Greece, Egypt, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

[1] Due to the large number of well-preserved Gilded Age estates and townhouses, many of which house diplomatic missions or dignitaries, Embassy Row has been protected as part of the Massachusetts Avenue Historic District.

[citation needed] Considered Washington's premier residential address in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Massachusetts Avenue became known for its numerous mansions housing the city's social and political elites.

The Great Depression of 1929 led many to sell their homes; the often illustrious and expansive estates were well-suited for housing diplomatic missions as well as lodges of social clubs, giving Embassy Row its present name and identity.

This event was started in 2007 by the embassies of member states of the European Union, and extended in 2008 to other countries around the world under coordination by Cultural Tourism DC.

They are erected either on private grounds, many of them by the embassies to showcase a prominent national figure, or on public (federal) land following an Act of Congress, including the successive Circles and several triangular parks created by the intersections between the diagonal avenue and the L'Enfant Plan grid.

The section of New Hampshire Avenue NW north of Dupont Circle alone is home to the embassies of Argentina, Belarus, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Grenada, Jamaica, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

A high-security enclave in Van Ness, one mile north of the Naval Observatory on the federally owned former grounds of the National Bureau of Standards in Cleveland Park, was developed from 1968 as the International Chancery Center.

It is home to the embassies of Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Monaco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, Slovakia, and the United Arab Emirates.

[42] A number of other embassies are scattered south of Massachusetts Avenue and closer to the National Mall, notably those of Canada, Mexico, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union.