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Living in Washington 12 years ago, with young children, I fell in love with the city’s mixture of formality and wildness. Raccoons hurried through our garden at night and huge, prehistoric insects beat against the windows. Like America itself, Washington appeared to be in control, but it wasn’t at all. When it snowed in winter, which it nearly always did, everything shut down and people expressed consternation.

It is the interplay between the grandeur of the architecture and the delicacy of the blossom and the light that helps to make Washington such a dramatic experience, especially during the spring, and makes all three of these monuments to these mighty presidents so extraordinary.

The memorials to the courage and sacrifice of the ordinary soldier are as impressive in their way. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) has a dizzying list of names of the dead etched into black marble, and at the Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995), statues of grey fighters make their way in helmets and grey raincoats, warily stepping over neat strips of black marble and neat, low-lying firs. Much less effective, however, is the pompous new National World War II Memorial, with its 56 pillars in a semicircle around a central plaza.

The museums and galleries that line the National Mall would take days to see properly. The newest is the National Museum of the American Indian (2004); gorgeous outside, a little dull within. Two of the best are the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, where the tarantula feeding sessions are not just for kids.

If you want to visit another source of pure power, with plenty of prowling tarantulas, go to the Capitol building for a tour and make sure you ask to sit in on a session. Watch the senators talking in the corridor like the conspirators in Julius Caesar.

To take a break from the imperial side of the city, browse through Georgetown, the Hampstead of Washington, with its galleries, boutiques, restaurants, cobbled back streets, bars and red-brick houses with glossy painted doors. This is the oldest part of DC, established as a port in the early 18th century, where John F Kennedy and Jackie later entertained and Kissinger held court. As a builder remarked disapprovingly of the old house we owned in Washington, it has some age on it.

Suburban life orbits the poised and formal city centre, which has livened up over the past 12 years, with new restaurants, bars and clubs opening, and uneasy areas such as Chinatown and U Street now sizzling. The Hotel Monaco, in the Penn quarter, is drop-dead chic, as is the Mandarin Oriental, with its grand views over the Potomac. In the fish market and restaurants of Water Street, rich and poor scramble together over all-you-can-eat buffets and great buckets of seafood.

The trees are not dwarfed by skyscrapers, as they are in the streets of New York. Although Washington, on the face of it, worships human greatness, it is nature that seems in command, the snows and humidity and radiant light of the early morning, the beauty of the trees that line the wide streets and parks such as Rock Creek Park, which loops through the city. Here, the landscape and buildings and light constantly tease and delight. This is an extravagantly beautiful city: its layout is of wide, tree-lined streets, embassies and houses swept back as if bowing, bridges and sudden parks, bronze statues. As you drive to the north of the city, the cathedral rises like lace against the fretwork of trees. Would I live there again? I don’t know. They say never go back, but some places do tempt you.

TRAVEL BRIEF

Getting there: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com), United (0845 844 4777, www.unitedairlines.co.uk) and Virgin Atlantic (0870 380 2007, www.virgin-atlantic.com) fly from Heathrow; from £388. Maxjet (0800 0234300, www.maxjet.com) flies all-business from Stansted; from about £1,000.

Where to stay: Hotel Monaco (00 1 800-649 1202, www.monaco-dc.com) has doubles from £89; the Mandarin Oriental (554 8588, www.mandarin-oriental.com) has doubles from £135.

Tour operators: British Airways Holidays (0870 243 3406, www.ba.com/holidays) has three nights at the three-star Washington Plaza from £599pp, room-only, including BA flights from Heathrow. Or try Virgin Holidays (0870 220 2788, www.virginholidays.co.uk) or Kuoni (01306 742888, www.kuoni.co.uk).

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