Annapolis, MD

121 Blake Rd, Annapolis, MD

Last updated 8/27/2026

Annapolis has served as the capital of Maryland since 1695 and briefly functioned as the capital of the entire United States in 1783 and 1784, when the Continental Congress met in the Maryland State House — the building where George Washington formally resigned his military commission, an event now considered one of the more remarkable voluntary transfers of power in the founding of American democracy. The United States Naval Academy, founded in Annapolis in 1845, occupies a substantial waterfront campus along the Severn River and gives the city an enduring military-academic identity, with the Naval Academy's massed formations, sailing programs, and graduation ceremonies drawing visitors well beyond the school's own midshipmen and their families. Annapolis's historic district, built around a colonial-era street grid radiating out from the State House and the Naval Academy, has preserved one of the highest concentrations of original 18th-century buildings still standing in any American city, a density of colonial architecture that's made the compact downtown a genuine open-air museum. Annapolis's combination of serving as Maryland's colonial-era and current state capital, briefly hosting the entire nation's capital function, and housing the US Naval Academy has made it one of the most historically significant small cities anywhere on the East Coast, sitting at the edge of the greater Baltimore-Washington corridor.

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