About Marisol Vega and this site
I am a licensed Washington DC tour guide. I live in Foggy Bottom, about three quarters of a mile from the Lincoln Memorial, and I am on the Mall most weeks of the year. I started this site in the week the undercroft opened, because every second group I took up those steps asked me the same question about tickets, and every answer they had found online had been written before June 2026.
Why the site exists
The domain says tickets, and for a century the honest answer to that was that there is no such thing. It stopped being true on 25 June 2026, when the undercroft museum beneath the memorial opened with timed-entry tickets. Two different answers now live at one address, and mixing them up is the mistake I watch people make in person.
The memorial itself — the steps, the chamber, the statue, the two inscribed side walls — is free, open 24 hours a day and needs no ticket. You can walk up at three in the morning and nobody will stop you. The museum underneath needs a timed ticket, which you can book yourself or collect free at a kiosk. Every page here is built on holding those two apart, and the tickets page is where I would send anyone with five minutes.
The other thing nobody was telling visitors: of the eighteen guided tours I track, exactly two include undercroft entry. The rest stop at the memorial, which is fine and free, and people book them expecting the new museum. That is why an independent guide reviews tours at all. Every review here says whether the undercroft is in the price, and sixteen of them say it is not.
What I know, and what I do not
I know the visit. Which Metro exit puts you on the right side of the road, where the elevator is and that it goes to the chamber, how long the walk from Foggy Bottom–GWU actually takes, and what a two-hour parking limit on Ohio Drive does to an afternoon. That is the job.
I am not a Lincoln scholar and this site does not pretend otherwise. Where a page makes a historical or architectural claim, it cites the National Park Service, and where the Park Service has not published something, the page says so instead of guessing. There are more of those gaps than you would think. Two NPS pages give two different step counts because they measure two different stretches of stair, so the steps page gives both figures and names the page each one comes from. Which of the two side walls carries which speech is not something I have found in an NPS source, so this site does not tell you. I would rather be one answer short than confidently wrong in three languages.
How the site is paid for
By GetYourGuide commission on tour bookings, and by nothing else. There is no commission on the memorial, because the memorial is free, and none on an undercroft ticket you book yourself, which is the route this site puts first and explains step by step. The full version, including what we earn on and what we do not, is on the affiliate disclosure.
Corrections
Hours change, kiosks move, tours drop stops for bridge closures. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell me and I will fix it. The facts on this site were last checked on 19 August 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Who writes this site?
Marisol Vega, a licensed Washington DC tour guide based in Foggy Bottom. The visitor information comes from her own guiding and from National Park Service and Recreation.gov sources, which are named on the pages that use them.
Is this an official National Park Service website?
No. This is an independent guide with no affiliation to the National Park Service, and it sells nothing itself. The official pages are nps.gov/linc for the memorial and recreation.gov for undercroft tickets.