Session resources

Annapolis on session weekends

Updated September 25, 2026 · Every hour, fee and schedule below was read from the operator’s or agency’s own published page.

The 451st session of the Maryland General Assembly runs from January 13 to April 12, 2027 — ninety consecutive days. Thirteen Saturdays and thirteen Sundays fall inside that span, and if your term is bracketed by a move-in week and a pack-out week, fifteen Saturdays fall inside the lease. That is a meaningful share of the time you will spend in Annapolis, and almost nothing written about the session covers it.

Winter Annapolis is not summer Annapolis. Several of the town’s best-known attractions close for the season, the commuter buses that get people in and out during the week stop entirely at the weekend, and one or two things that sound seasonal turn out to run right through January. What follows is what the operators themselves publish.

The State House is open on Saturdays

This surprises people who have only ever entered the building on a working day. The Maryland State Archives states plainly that “the State House is open to the public every day from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., except Christmas and New Years Day.” Every day includes Saturday and Sunday. Picture identification is required for entry and metal detectors are in operation, and self-guided tour information is available by the Archives Room on the first floor.

The distinction worth knowing is between walking in and being taken round. The Visitors Program’s group educational tours are “by advance reservation only on weekdays,” with two weeks’ notice requested. So a weekend visit is a self-guided one — which, for a family visiting a member or staffer mid-session, is often the better version anyway: the building is quiet, and nobody is in a hurry.

What is closed for most of the session

The single most useful thing to know before someone plans a weekend around it: the William Paca House and Garden is closed from January through March 18. Historic Annapolis publishes that as its winter schedule, with the property reopening March 19 — a Friday — on summer hours of Sunday to Thursday 10 am to 5 pm and Friday and Saturday 10 am to 3 pm. For nine of the session’s thirteen weekends, the most-photographed house in Annapolis is shut. Admission when it does open is $12 general and $7 for children aged 3 to 17 for the guided house tour, or $5 for the self-guided garden.

The Museum of Historic Annapolis on Main Street is a related case with a different answer. Its visitor page publishes a summer schedule (March 19 to August 31, daily 10 am to 5 pm) and a fall schedule (September 1 to October 31, Friday to Monday 10 am to 4 pm), and no winter schedule at all. We are not going to guess what that means. If you want it in February, call first. Admission is $7 for ages 8 and up.

What is open, week in and week out

Place	Weekend hours	Cost
Maryland State House	Every day, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm	—
Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum	Tue – Sat, 10 am – 4 pm (closed Sun & Mon)	Free
Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park	Tue – Sun, 10 am – 3 pm	$10 adult, $5 senior/student/child
USNA Armel-Leftwich Visitor Center	Jan – Feb, Sat & Sun 9 am – 4 pm	—
Quiet Waters Park	7 days, 7:00 am – dusk	$8 per vehicle
Sandy Point State Park	7 am – sunset, year-round	$3 per vehicle, Oct 1 – Apr 30
County farmers market (winter)	Sundays, 9 am – 12 pm, Jan – Mar	—

The Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum at 84 Franklin Street is the state’s museum of Maryland African American history and culture, three minutes from the State House, open Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 4 pm and free. It is closed Sunday and Monday, so it is a Saturday item.

The Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park at 723 Second Street in Eastport is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 3 pm, with the park campus open daily dawn to dusk. Adults $10, seniors, students and children 3 to 12 $5, under 3 free.

The Naval Academy keeps its Armel-Leftwich Visitor Center at 52 King George Street open through the winter: January and February, 9 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday and 9 am to 4 pm Saturday and Sunday, moving to daily 9 am to 5 pm from March. Two entry rules matter and both changed recently. Anyone without a Department of Defense credential or locally prepared DBIDS must park outside the Academy and walk in through Gate 1. And every visitor aged 18 or over needs a REAL ID compliant driver’s licence or state ID (look for the star), a United States passport, or an enhanced driver’s licence. A Maryland licence that has not been upgraded will not get a guest through the gate. Admissions presentations run Monday through Saturday at 10 am and 2 pm except federal holidays.

The Anne Arundel County Farmers Market at Riva Road and Harry S. Truman Parkway runs a winter market every Sunday from 9 am to 12 pm, January through March. The Saturday market, 7 am to 12 pm, returns in April. For a household cooking at home through a ninety-day session rather than eating out six nights a week, a Sunday morning market that runs all winter is a more practical fact than any restaurant list.

For open air, Quiet Waters Park at 600 Quiet Waters Park Road is open seven days a week from 7 am to dusk, closed only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, at $8 per vehicle — or $40 for an annual resident pass, $50 non-resident, which pays for itself in five visits. Its Visitor Center galleries are open Saturday and Sunday 10 am to 4 pm. Sandy Point State Park, at 1100 East College Parkway with the Bay Bridge in the frame, is open 7 am to sunset year-round except Christmas Day, and its service charge from October 1 through April 30 is $3 per vehicle — the whole of the session falls inside the off-season rate.

The weekend transport catch

This is the part that changes plans. The MTA commuter buses that make an Annapolis session survivable for people based in Washington or Baltimore do not run at the weekend at all. The published schedule for the No. 220 Annapolis–Washington line states that it “operates Monday thru Friday” and “does not operate on Saturdays, Sundays, and the following observed holidays: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Friday after Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.”

Two of those holidays fall inside the 2027 session: Martin Luther King Day on January 18 and Presidents’ Day on February 15, both Mondays. On those days and on every Saturday and Sunday of the session, the commuter option is simply not there.

Inside the city, weekend service is thinner than weekday service. The City of Annapolis publishes a dedicated Sunday and Holiday Service page: the Go! Time on-demand service takes Sunday trip requests from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm, Mobility ADA paratransit runs the same 7:00 am to 8:00 pm, and the Gold Route is now operated by Anne Arundel County. Go! Time also runs on holidays 7:00 am to 8:00 pm, but not on Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year’s Day. One note in fairness to anyone planning around it: the city’s Sunday and Holiday Service page and its Bus Routes and Schedules page do not currently list the same fixed routes as running on Sundays, so confirm your particular route with the city before relying on it. Our guide to getting to Annapolis without a car covers the weekday network, the airport connections and the fares.

Walking distance is the whole argument

Read the table again and notice how much of it is on foot from the historic district. The State House, the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum on Franklin Street, the Naval Academy’s Gate 1 and visitor center on King George Street, City Dock and Main Street are all a short walk from one another. The Maritime Museum is across Spa Creek in Eastport. Only the two parks and the farmers market really want a car, and the parks charge by the vehicle rather than the head.

A weekend in Annapolis during session is only pleasant if you are already in Annapolis. From a hotel room outside the district, or from a house forty minutes away, the same list becomes a set of errands. From a base a few minutes’ walk from Lawyers Mall, it is a Saturday.

A note on what this page does not tell you

There are no restaurant hours here, and no garage rates. Individual restaurants in Annapolis change winter hours without much notice and a great many of them publish those hours only on social media, and the city’s parking rate pages could not be read from a primary source when this was written. We would rather leave a gap than fill it with a number that is wrong by February. When we can verify those directly, they will get their own pages.