The Palisades

Every city needs one neighborhood that refuses to act like one. In Washington, that job belongs to the Palisades. Strung along MacArthur Boulevard on the bluffs above the Potomac, it behaves like a small river town that the District grew around and never digested: a commercial strip where the hardware store knows your porch project, a farmers market that owns Sunday mornings, and a Fourth of July parade that has been the neighborhood's true annual meeting for generations.

Below the bluff, the C&O Canal towpath runs flat toward Georgetown; behind it, Battery Kemble's woods climb toward Kent. Between the two sits some of upper northwest's most varied housing, streetcar-era cottages to homes with river views, which is why the Palisades manages a trick its grander neighbors cannot: it has a front door at almost every price a fine neighborhood can ask.