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With its main streets and town square, Mount Pleasant still feels like the village it once was. But it has also seen lives as a fashionable streetcar suburb, a solid working-class neighborhood, and an enclave of counterculture politics.

Today, Mount Pleasant is best known for its vida, beckoning with authentic Salvadoran pupusas, mariachi bands, genuine bodegas, and restaurants bringing the sabor of Central America to the Nation's Capital. Architecture buffs will find that Mount Pleasant's trademark rowhouses and apartment buildings have survived remarkably intact. In fact, the entire neighborhood is protected as a historic district. As you explore, pick up an apple turnover from Heller's, one of the city's oldest bakeries; look for unusual antique or art gifts; or seek out the community's restored fire and police call boxes, containing striking bronze sculptures. Mount Pleasant Street is most lively on Saturdays, when shoppers clog the weekly farmers' market (May through November) or load up on everything from masa harina to tofu at bustling bodegas that line the commercial strip.

Relive the days when streetcars clattered up and down the street, or when a speech by civil rights firebrand H. Rap Brown was standard fare. Walk all 17 signs or sample one or two per visit. The Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Heritage Trail takes about 90 minutes.

Locate the area's nine Art on Call boxes – formerly abandoned police and fire call boxes restored as community art. Each features stirring bronze sculptures by artist and former resident Michael Ross and represents a scene from the community's history.

Check out our Calendar for up-to-date information on exhibitions, lectures and other heritage happenings in the city.