How many steps to the top of United States Capitol dome?

The 365 steps from the Rotunda floor to the top of the dome are not on the public tour: access is by escorted staff-led visit arranged through a member of Congress, and the number available is small. The often-repeated claim that the count deliberately matches the days of the year is unsupported. The climb passes between the inner and outer shells of the cast-iron dome, which weighs almost 4,000 tonnes and was completed during the Civil War on Lincoln's explicit instruction that the work continue. The route ends beneath the Statue of Freedom.

The numbers

Steps

365

Reaches

the top of the dome — staff-escorted tours only

Public access

Not climbable by the public

Where

Washington DC, United States

Height climbed

88 m — 289 ft

Average rise per step

241 mm

This count describes a stairwell the public cannot use. Published step figures for famous structures very often refer to service or emergency stairs — worth knowing before planning a visit around one.

Published counts for the same structure routinely disagree by five to ten per cent, and nearly always for one of three reasons: whether intermediate landings count as steps, whether the final platform step counts, and where the climb is deemed to start. The figure here says what it reaches.

How it compares