Verizon Center

This huge arena hosts some 200 public events every year, including concerts, family entertainment, horse shows and college athletics, as well as professional games by the Washington Capitals NHL hockey team and the Washington Wizards NBA basketball team, along with college basketball. It involves all the economic excesses now de rigueur in American professional sport: startling admission prices, 110 exorbitant sky-boxes for corporate entertaining, restaurants restricting admission to top-end ticketholders, and so on. Still, it’s well designed and conveniently situated on top of a Metro station.