Baltimore is only down the road from Washington - 45 minutes if the traffic is good - but it's a different world. Here you have Maryland history going back to the 17th century when the site of Washington was a malarial swamp on the Potomac occupied only by native American tribes.
And while Washington and the White House were being burned by the British in 1814, Baltimore held out thanks to Fort McHenry. Its Stars and Stripes flag still flying defiantly through the bombardment inspired the poem written by Francis Scott Key which became the "Star Spangled Banner" although it was not the official national anthem until 1931.
The faded flag can still be viewed in the Museum of American History in Washington but Hillary Clinton has recently announced that $5 million is needed to preserve it. Baltimore should have kept it.
Here, in Baltimore, you have the roots of the Catholic Church in America with its first cathedral and first archbishop, the Jesuit John Carroll, who also founded Georgetown University. Maryland was the only Catholic colony among the original 13, or at least the only one which officially tolerated that religion.
Baltimore was, and is, above all a great seaport with its natural harbour at the head of the huge Chesapeake Bay. While the big ships still berth and unload, the main attraction for the visitor today is the magnificent National Aquarium in the inner harbour.
You will see more sharks here than anywhere else outside of the Great Barrier Reef.
Did you know that Wallis Simpson, "the woman I love", was a native of Baltimore? As this is being written, her clothes are being auctioned in New York. There is a nice portrait of her and the Duke of Windsor relaxing in Palm Beach in one of the numerous museums.
There is more interest in the nearby exhibit of the local jazz pianist, Eubie Blake, with a recording of him playing We're just wild about Harry, a lively tune that once got former Government press secretary, Sean Duignan, into trouble with the Attorney General. But that's another story.
If you're a baseball fan you can visit the home of legendary Babe Ruth. It's not far from the Camden Yards stadium of the local Orioles team which was diddled out of the World Series by the Yankees last year when a 10year-old New Yorker stuck out his hand from the stand and prevented a home run.
For more literary types there are the preserved homes of author and feared journalist H. L. Mencken and horror story writer, Edgar Allen Poe. On Mencken's house is engraved the words: "To please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
Poe is buried at Westminister Church graveyard and for almost 50 years a strange ritual is carried out on his birthday on January 19th. A man dressed in black appears very early that morning at the tombstone and leaves three roses and a bottle of cognac. Fans of Poe who gather to observe the ritual have never found out who these mysterious strangers are who usually take a swig from the bottle as well.
The curator of the Poe house and museum, Jeff Jerome, says that "The guy last year was big and walked with an attitude. This year's guy seemed like a regular Joe." No it wasn't me. I never get up that early.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to visit the house of Charles Carroll, one of Maryland's most famous sons, longest surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence, and founder of the Baltimore-Ohio railway. The City Life Museum which includes the house has closed for lack of funds.
But the magnificent period mansion he built for the wedding of his only son, Charles jnr, called Homewood, is still preserved with period furniture on the campus of Johns Hopkins University. Charles jnr drank heavily to the despair of his wife Harriet and young family. His nephew wrote to a relative: "We can't get him to shoot himself, so we must bear with this degradation still longer."
Baltimore used to have a reputation for street riots. As the largest city in a border state, it was in a difficult situation when the Civil War broke out in 1860. There were many freed slaves from the tobacco plantations living in the city but the white population sympathised with the breakaway South and attacked Union troops passing through to Washington.
Naturally, there were Irish involved. Many of them had helped build Charles Carroll's railway and the rival canal. Some of them named a suburb on the lower harbour after Dundalk. Fianna Fail Minister, Dermot Ahern, from the Co Louth town is trying to twin it with its Maryland offspring.
Baltimore got its name from Maryland's founder, George Calvert, who was granted the barony of Baltimore in Co Longford in 1625 by King James 1. Such a lowly barony was a sign of his disfavour after Calvert converted to Catholicism.
He got on better with Charles 1 who gave him a grant of the territory around the Chesapeake which he named Maryland after Queen Maria.
Baltimore was actually the capital of the United States for a brief period after independence. Washington DC was later built on land donated by Maryland. You could say it's really a suburb of Baltimore.