Vietnam Veterans Memorial
US national memorial in Washington, D.C.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, commonly called the Vietnam Memorial, is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the United States Armed Forces who served in the Vietnam War. The two-acre (8,100 m2) site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those service members who died or remain missing as a result of their service in Vietnam and South East Asia during the war. The Memorial Wall was designed by American architect Maya Lin and is an example of minimalist architecture. The Wall, completed in 1982, has since been supplemented with the statue Three Soldiers in 1984 and the Vietnam Women's Memorial in 1993.
The memorial is in Constitution Gardens, adjacent to the National Mall and just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. It is maintained by the National Park Service and receives around three million visitors each year. It was initially controversial for its lack of heroic ornamentation and iconography, but its reputation improved over time. In 2007, it was ranked tenth on the "List of America's Favorite Architecture" by the American Institute of Architects. As a national memorial, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Appearance
Memorial Wall
The memorial is composed of two adjoining walls.
The public source identifies “Vietnam Veterans Memorial” as uS national memorial in Washington, D.C. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Vietnam, Veterans and Memorial.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q713628. VIAF identifies the subject as 210229529. The Library of Congress control number is sh85143271. Authority coordinates are 38.891, -77.048. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1984, 1993 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vietnam Veterans Memorial” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.