The Lincoln Memorial Undercroft

What is actually down there

The memorial stands on a grid of concrete columns, and for a century that grid held up the building with nobody but maintenance crews to look at it. The museum is built around it. Along with the column grid there are interactive displays and a multimedia presentation on how the meaning of the memorial has changed across its first hundred years, which is a more interesting subject than a building’s construction history and is the reason the space is worth the ticket. There are restrooms inside.

Two things it is not. It is not a crypt: Lincoln is buried in Springfield, Illinois, and never was under here. And it is not large in the way the memorial above it is large. One of the four reviews on the direct-entry ticket says exactly that: “I was expecting more from it. The exhibition was comparatively very small for this huge monument.” Four reviews is not a verdict, and the reason there are only four is that the museum opened in June, but it is the only first-hand account we have and burying it would be dishonest.

Hours, last entry and the two-hour rule

The undercroft keeps its own hours, and they are not the memorial’s hours. The memorial above is open around the clock; the museum below closes at 9 p.m. from March to October and at 8 p.m. from November to February. Last entry is one hour before closing, and visitors may stay a maximum of two hours before closing time. If you arrive at the memorial after the museum has shut, you have lost nothing except the museum — the statue and the inscriptions are still there, lit, at any hour. More on opening hours and on the memorial after dark.

Tickets

Timed entry, free admission, and two ways to get it from the Park Service: book ahead on Recreation.gov, where the site adds a non-refundable service charge of a dollar per ticket and releases slots 30 days out at 11 a.m. ET and next-day at 4 p.m. ET, or take a free walk-up ticket from 8:45 a.m. at the Korean War Veterans Memorial kiosk. Up to six per transaction, groups of up to 50 online. The full walkthrough, and what the resold tickets are, is on the tickets page.

Accessibility

The undercroft is fully accessible. The film carries open captions, so they are on the screen for everyone rather than something you have to request, and audio description is offered in a screen-reader-compatible text format. There are accessible restrooms inside, and an elevator to the memorial chamber above, to the left of the steps. See step-free access for the whole picture, including the seven accessible parking spaces on Daniel Chester French Drive.

A guided walk that ends with undercroft tickets

The operator’s evening tour of the National Mall finishes at the Lincoln Memorial and hands over timed undercroft tickets for a self-guided visit afterwards. The operator asks you to “plan to spend an additional 30 minutes to 1 hour exploring on your own after the tour concludes”. It has no reviews yet, for the same reason as everything else here: the museum is weeks old.

Or read whether any of it is worth paying for, and what to look at in the chamber above before you go down.

Frequently asked questions