Baltimore's most elegant quarter is just north of downtown on the shallow rise known as Mount Vernon , where a couple of good museums sit amid rows of eighteenth-century brick townhouses. The neighborhood, good for strolling, takes its name from the country home of George Washington, whose likeness tops the 165ft marble column of the central Washington Monument , in a small leafy park next to the aspirational spire of the sham-Gothic Mount Vernon Methodist Church at Charles Street and Monument Place. You can climb the monument for a great view over the city, but it opens only on random days.

At the foot of the monument, the solemn stone facade of the Peabody Conservatory of Music hides one of the city's best interior spaces: the beautiful, skylit atrium of the Peabody Library (Mon-Fri 9am-3pm; free). Five tiers of intricate wrought-iron balconies rise above ground-floor displays of sixteenth-century books, including a wonderful illustrated 1555 edition of Boccaccio's Decameron and a 1493 printing of the Nuremburg Chronicles . Two blocks west, the Maryland Historical Society museum (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 9am-5pm; $4, free on Sat 9-11am) has a fairly tame collection of portraits of Maryland society and documents tracing local history, though its antique-filled chambers give a strong sense of the maritime wealth created here through nineteenth-century trade. A small room off the lobby holds some nifty models of Chesapeake Bay boats, and upstairs the "War of 1812 Gallery" displays the original manuscript of the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner .

Mount Vernon

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• Walters Art Museum

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