The neighborhood just to the northeast of mine is Adams Morgan, one of the most ethnically diverse and vibrant in the city (except on weekend nights when it becomes a bastion for Virginia party boys and women attending bachelorette pub crawls).

One of the things that makes the neighborhood stand out are the impressively large murals that surround the community. These are just two of them:

Mama Ayesha’s marks your entrance into Adams Morgan after you cross the Duke Ellington bridge from the west. Mama Ayesha Abraham, born in Jerusalem in the late 1800s, opened the restaurant (originally called Calvert Café) in 1960. Still run by her nephews and great-nephews, the Middle Eastern eatery took her name after she died in 1993. The 60-foot-long mural, Mama Ayesha Welcomes Presidents, was painted earlier this year by Karla Rodas.

Keep heading down the road toward the heart of Adams Morgan and you’ll come across Un Pueblo Sin Murales… (A People Without Murals…) just before you hit Columbia Road.

This is the oldest outdoor mural in D.C., painted in 1977 by Carlos Salozar and Felipe Martinez, who’d immigrated to the U.S. to escape the Pinochet regime in Chile a few years earlier. Designed to embrace the Latino heritage of Adams Morgan, the mural spans several buildings and is three stories high. After falling into disrepair (although never marred by graffiti, local activists are quick to note), it was restored in 2005 by Juan Pineda, who kept the original images, but updated the colors by using spray paint.