Ace DC: Washington's raft of museums has something for everyone

The Washington, DC area has more than 200 museums, many grand, famous and praised. There are 16 Smithsonian museums alone and, when you've had enough of Rembrandt and Renoir, had your fill of the Hope Diamond at the Natural History Museum and seen the handwritten Constitution of the United States, in The National Archives, there are a host of more offbeat establishments to consider.

The International Spy Museum celebrates the world of snooping and spooks, and offers a crash course on the history and tradecraft of global espionage. A huge collection of artefacts from around the world is housed in a cluster of restored 19th-century Victorian Italianate commercial buildings in Washington's Downtown area. The ornate mouldings and friezes of the post United States civil war landmark are charming, but it is the glimmering wraparound red and silver marquee-style sign announcing the museum in bold letters and the street-level windows that offer a peek inside that give the crowds (and there is always a queue) a frisson of delight.

What they see when they finally enter are hundreds of authentic tools of the trade, such as locks and picks, eavesdropping devices, a coat-button camera, a shoe with a transmitter hidden in a hollow heel and a mesmerising collection of weapons. There's the "Bulgarian umbrella", a device that fires a poison-laced pellet, a gold engagement ring that shoots tiny bullets and, courtesy of the KGB, a lipstick called the "kiss of death", which doubles as a pistol.

Watch on screen as a female CIA operative is transformed within minutes into a bearded, turbaned terrorist stereotype, fly with the spy pigeons (the living, breathing predecessors to drones) that carried messages and cameras during the second world war and learn about the covert contributions of everyone from Mata Hari to Julia Child.