Gettysburg: The battleground

It takes most of a day to see the 3500-acre Gettysburg National Military Park , which surrounds the town (daily 6am-10pm; free). The visitor center on Taneytown Road (daily: summer 8am-6pm, rest of year 8am-5pm; tel 717/334-1124) doubles as the best museum , with guns, uniforms, surgical and musical instruments, tents and flags, as well as touching photos of the 1938 Joint Soldiers Reunion. A thirty-minute, painstakingly thorough electric map show ($3) plots the intricacies of the battle; at the visitor center, you can pick up details of a self-guided driving route , or a guide will join you in your car for a personalized two-hour tour ($35). The guides are available on a first come, first served basis, and the visitor center does not accept reservations, so it's best to arrive just before it opens at 8am to secure a guide for the same day.

Directly opposite the visitor center, the Gettysburg National Cemetery contains thousands of graves arranged in a semicircle around the Soldiers' National Monument on the site where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. Most stirring of all are the hundreds of small marble gravestones marked only with numbers. A short walk away, the Cyclorama Center holds a 356ft circular painting of Pickett's Charge , the suicidal Confederate thrust across open wheatfields in broad daylight, and is accompanied by a recitation of the Gettysburg Address (daily 8am-5pm; $3). The earliest existing draft of the Address (not, as commonly believed, scrawled on the back of an envelope) sits in a hallowed cabinet in a dark room on the lower story. The battlegrounds themselves, golden fields reminiscent of an English country landscape, are peaceful now except for their names: Valley of Death, Bloody Run, Cemetery Hill . Uncanny statues of key figures stand at appropriate points and heavy stone monuments honor different regiments.

Gettysburg: The battleground

Gettysburg

Pennsylvania cities

Travel to Gettysburg

Gettysburg Hotels