The green-domed National Museum of Natural History is the second most visited museum in the Smithsonian complex, with more than 6 million annual visitors (with about a million during each of the summer months). To do this museum justice, you should expect to spend at least three or four hours there — its total area is more than 18 football fields!

Highlights of the museum include the fabled Hope diamond, which always draws a huge crowd. The nearby Hall of Minerals is a favorite among children, with re-creations of a copper mine, many touchable geodes and rocks, and a good display of meteorites. Kids also love the insect zoo, where they can see inside termites' nests and a beehive and see a display of Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

The Hall of Bones is a great learning display on how mammal skeletons have evolved, and the replica of a giant blue whale and two preserved squid carcasses (two of only three architeuthis — giant squid — bodies in the country) are displayed and explained so even a parent can understand.

The Curse of the Hope Diamond

Many people say that the reason the Hope diamond lies behind glass in the Smithsonian is that the curse on the diamond can't harm anyone from there. According to legend, the diamond was once the eye of an Indian idol that was stolen, smuggled into Paris, and later turned up as the Blue diamond, part of the French royal jewels. Everyone who came in contact with the jewel was said to have met with tragedy, from Louis XIV's oldest son to his oldest grandson and his great-grandson. There's even a rumor that the stone was used as a bribe to get Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette out of France.

The diamond disappeared for a while — some think it appears around the neck of Queen Maria Louisa of Spain in a Goya painting — and resurfaced in Amsterdam, where it was recut. The jeweler died penniless because his son stole the gem, then the jeweler's son committed suicide after his father's death. It was purchased by Harry Hope in London in 1830 (from whom we get the name), whose son and daughter-in-law inherited the stone but also died penniless.

Later, an Eastern European prince bought the stone and gave it to a Follies Bergere actress, whom he later shot. After that, a Greek owner and his family were killed in a horrible car accident. The stone is said to have then turned up in Russia in the hands of Catherine the Great, who did not have a happy ending to her life.

A wealthy Turkish sultan bought the diamond and gave it to his favorite wife, who was later murdered after he was dethroned. Evelyn Walsh McLean, wife to the heir of The Washington Post fortune, had seen the blue stone while on her honeymoon in Turkey. She bought it, and, knowing about its history and the accompanying legend, supposedly had a priest bless it before she wore it. However, that precautionary measure did her no good because her only son was killed in a bizarre car accident right outside his home; her husband was committed to a mental institution after his involvement with the Teapot Dome scandal was revealed; and her daughter committed suicide.

New York jeweler Harry Winston bought the stone in the early 1950s and gave it to the Smithsonian on permanent loan, some say because his wife kept begging him to let her wear it. Winston sent the diamond to the museum by registered mail, and there's a story that after the mailman handled the package, his life was cursed: His leg was mangled in a car accident, his wife died of a heart attack, his dog died, and his house burned down.

Ground Floor

The ground-floor entrance on Constitution Avenue opens with highlights from the collection, including geodes and crystals, a 700,000-year-old hand ax, totem poles from the Pacific Northwest, a gigantic fossilized shark tooth, meteorites, and butterflies from South America. A collection of 300 local bird specimens is also on this floor.

The totally remodeled Atrium Cafeteria is here, too, offering many child-pleasing meals (hamburgers, pizza), as well as hot food and personally prepared sandwiches. The museum's gift shop is also on this level and has two wings — one exclusively for children. Museum artifacts, such as a lead coffin, are on display throughout the shop. The museum shop is extensive, and you could spend an hour in it as well. You can also buy a replica of the Hope diamond — with matching earrings!

First Floor

If you enter the museum from the Mall, you will walk into the museum's rotunda, where you will be greeted by a sight you won't soon forget — a giant African bush elephant trumpets your arrival with his extended trunk. This mighty creature has been a constant delight of childhood visits to Washington D.C. since before the baby boomers were kids.

There are eight exhibit halls on this floor, some of which have banners over their entrances from the rotunda.

Early Life

This series of exhibits starts with a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite containing amino acids, the building blocks of life. A relative newcomer is the oldest known fossil — of microorganisms — from 3.5 billion years ago, with a film explaining the law of evolution and various exhibits and fossils tracing the emergence of life from the ancient sea to the conquest of land. Some of the highlights of this exhibit include rare 530-year-old fossilized soft-bodied animals in shale, which were discovered by the fourth secretary of the Smithsonian in 1910, and the fossilized skeleton of an early whale.

The exhibit charts the evolution of ancient amphibians and plants and concludes with the dinosaur exhibit, where the skeletal remains of a diplodocus, an eighty-foot sauropod and the largest land-based dinosaur, is on display with a comptosaurus, stegosaurus, and an allosaurus. Informative, hands-on exhibits on dinosaur limbs, jaws, and teeth accompany this exhibit.

Ice Age Mammals

The next hall is dedicated to Ice Age mammals, where there are skeletons of saber-tooth tigers (one from the La Brea Tar Pits in California) and a woolly mammoth skeleton and tusk, as well as some preserved mammoth skin! Also on view is an Ice Age bison, freezedried by nature and recovered by Alaskan gold miners. This hall also features life-size tableaus of Neanderthal man and Ice Age mammals, and the FossiLab, where you may catch scientists working on fossils.

African Voices

The recently renovated exhibit hall makes African culture come alive as it explores the dynamism and diversity of African peoples from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope and the historical experience and influence of the African Diaspora. Highlights include a seventeenth-century Nigerian cast brass head, a carved door from Zanzibar, African headdresses from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a contemporary portable Somali house called an aqal. Don't miss Discover Africa, an interactive experience for families.

The Behring Family of Mammals

The Mammal Hall has been completely renovated. It contains 274 specimens, such as a sloth hanging upside down in a South American rain forest; a giraffe drinking from an African watering hole; and a pair of African lions bringing down a water buffalo. The renovation reorganized the material so that visitors can see the evolution of the various mammal species and their traits. It includes an eight-minute video as well as fossils that can be touched, such as the skull of an extinct bear.

Second Floor

The second floor is home to the Janet Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals, which is always packed because the legendary blue Hope diamond is on display here.

This exhibit hall also has a re-creation of a copper mine, a display of meteorites (including a fascinating story about meteorites that have dropped into people's homes), a moon rock, displays of ores and geodes to touch and examine, and many interactive displays on how minerals are formed.

The Hall of Western Culture

This is one of the most interesting exhibits in the museum. Its goal is to explain the history of Western civilization from the end of the Ice Age to 800 c.e., when the basic patterns of human existence were set.

The exhibit includes a diorama of the cave paintings of Lascaux, France, as well as excellent displays and informative short films about the ancient Egyptians and their burial and embalming processes. The Egyptian exhibits will hold even a child spellbound! Additional exhibits on Mesopotamian, ancient Greek, and Roman cultures are also on view here.

Osteology: The Hall of Bones

Floor-to-ceiling displays of hundreds of animal skeletons, grouped by order and species, dramatically show the law of evolution. Informative displays illustrate how bone structure adapted to the environment.

The Reptile Hall

This is an exhibit of alligators, frogs, turtles, and snakes in dioramas that duplicate their natural settings. Informative displays explain feeding habits, movement, and reptiles' influence on humans.

The Orkin Insect Zoo

This zoo is a relatively small but very entertaining exhibit on the world of insects. Here you can see a live beehive — put your hand on the glass and you can feel the bee's heat — along with an African termite mound and thrice-daily tarantula feedings (at 10:30 and 11:30 A.M. and 1:30 P.M. on weekdays). There are re-creations of rain forests and caves and swamps, all full of live bugs. The more docile members of the insect world can be held or touched by children (under supervision), including the ever-popular Madagascar hissing cockroach. There's also an insect lab where kids can see butterflies cocooning.

The Butterfly Garden

In the warmer months, there's an outdoor butterfly garden on the 9th Street side of the museum building where visitors can see the interaction between butterflies and plants. This is a nice follow-up to the insect zoo.

The Discovery Room

This is a hands-on, interactive room for children (and their parents) to touch and explore the many natural objects in the museum's collection. They have the opportunity to look into a crocodile's mouth; examine Discovery Boxes, which feature a variety of shells, fossils, plants, feathers, and bones; and touch an elephant tusk and a porcupine's spines. Look for a small room in the corner of the first floor near the museum store.

Restrooms

You may be tempted to think about finding restrooms in this immense museum as a safari, but not if you know where to look. Restrooms are located on the ground-floor Constitution Avenue lobby near the Information Desk; on the second floor next to the Discovery Room and the Ancient Seas exhibit; and on the second floor near the Hall of Western Culture.