Visiting 9/11 memorials

Out of the ashes of 9/11 has risen a vibrant neighborhood packed with new restaurants and hotels, places to live and spots to shop, along with many ways to pay respects to an area some worried would never come back.

A decade after the attacks on the World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, including the area around Ground Zero, draws roughly 9 million of the city's nearly 50 million visitors a year. The new memorial at Ground Zero will open next week on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. A museum will open at the site a year later under a glass atrium, taking visitors 70 feet down on gentle ramps to the epicenter of what used to be "the pit."

In Arlington, Va., the Pentagon Memorial was the first of the three attack sites to open an official memorial. Dedicated on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2008, it sits at the exact spot where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon's west wall, killing 184 people -- the limestone on the rebuilt portion of the wall is easily distinguished from the older facade.

Then there's Shanksville, Pa., where the memorial for hijacked Flight 93 is situated just off a tiny country road.

Visiting any of the memorials can be a stirring, introspective experience. Here are some things you need to know before you go.

MEMORIALS IN LOWER MANHATTAN

While local shopping, restaurants and other attractions abound in Lower Manhattan, remembering 9/11 is an important focus for many visitors -- right up there with Times Square and the Statue of Liberty. There's a lot to see both at the original site of the World Trade Center and the surrounding areas:

NATIONAL SEPTEMBER 11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM

The memorial is a big reveal years in the making. Created by design competition winner Michael Arad, who partnered with California landscape architect Peter Walker, it takes up about half of the 16-acre site. Along with the museum, additional office buildings and a new transit hub are still under construction.

The memorial will be dedicated on Sept. 11, during a ceremony for victims' families. It opens to the public the next day.

"The fact that this memorial outlines the very footprints where these towers stood sends a message to the world of what we lost that day and how we've come together," said 9/11 Memorial president Joe Daniels.

On the twin footprints of the towers are gentle waterfalls that empty into massive reflecting pools edged by bronze parapets with the names of the 2,983 people killed on 9/11 in New York, in a field near Shanksville, Pa., and at the Pentagon, along with victims of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.

The memorial site will be bordered by a stand of swamp white oak trees. On the west side of the south pool, by a small clearing called the memorial glade, stands the "survivor tree." It's a Callery pear rescued from the rubble and nursed back to health in the Bronx, only to be struck by lightning last year and survive. President Barack Obama laid a wreath at the tree in May, and new growth is thriving on branches that once were almost shorn.

Timed tickets (free but required) can be reserved up to six months in advance at 911memorial.org. Print your tickets beforehand if you can. Enter at the northeast corner of Albany and Greenwich streets for check-in no more than 30 minutes before your reservation.

Through Jan. 8, the memorial is open from 10 a.m. to last entry at 7 p.m. weekdays; 9 a.m.-7 p.m. weekends; from Jan. 9 to March 10, last entry will be at 5 p.m.

No restrooms will be available on site until the museum opens next September.

TOURS

The September 11 Families' Association offers intimate tours led by survivors, 9/11 workers and loved ones of those who perished.

Tracy Gazzani, a retired schoolteacher from Brooklyn, has done more than 150 of the tours, recounting the life and loss of her 24-year-old son, Terry. He worked a bonds desk at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the north tower. She spoke haltingly about learning of people who were jumping from the burning towers and her family's frantic distribution of fliers in search of Terry.

The daily tours stop indoors at the World Financial Center buildings for bird's-eye views of Ground Zero as the guides tell their stories to groups of 20 or fewer ($10 adults, younger than 12 free, tributewtc.org).

TRIBUTE WTC VISITOR CENTER

Five galleries exhibit moving photographs and artifacts, many with emotionally charged stories attached to them by 9/11 survivors and first responders. The center, a project of the September 11 Families' Association, is open daily and sees about 500,000 visitors a year ($15, 866-737-1184, tributewtc.org).

FIRE DEPARTMENT MEMORIAL

Next door to the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, outside the firehouse on Greenwich Street at Liberty, is the Fire Department of New York Memorial Wall. The firehouse, home to Ladder Co. 3, Engine Co. 10, lost five firefighters on 9/11, but the wall is a tribute to all firefighters who died. It was a gift from the law firm Holland & Knight and also honors one of the firm's partners, Glenn J. Winuk, a volunteer firefighter and medic from Jericho. He helped evacuate the firm's offices near the World Trade Center, then raced to the towers to help. Winuk died when the south tower collapsed.

ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL

This small Episcopal church, built in 1766, miraculously survived 9/11 just across the street from the World Trade Center. Volunteers ministered around the clock to Ground Zero workers at the chapel. Now on display, the exhibit "Unwavering Spirit" includes one of many cots set up with hand-knit blankets and stuffed animals during the harrowing work. A collection of uniform patches paying tribute to volunteers from around the world still smells of smoke. -- LEANNE ITALIE

PENTAGON MEMORIAL

The Pentagon Memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks is a contemplative spot. But it is not a quiet one.

Highways surrounding the Pentagon rumble with traffic. On a summer day, lawn sprinklers tweet and twitch as they spray the grounds surrounding the memorial. And every few minutes, departures from nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport fly low and loud across the sky.

"Everyone mentions the planes," said Lisa Dolan, who heads up a team of nearly 50 volunteer docents at the memorial, and whose husband -- Navy Capt. Robert Dolan -- was killed in the attack. "It's an uncomfortable feeling."

The Pentagon was the first of the three attack sites to open an official memorial. It's open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

WHAT TO EXPECT

It is not the most tourist-friendly location. Mass transit riders who take the Metrorail have a bit of a hike from the Pentagon train station to the memorial, and the parking lots closest to the memorial are generally off-limits to the public, although people can park at the Pentagon City mall and walk.

But there was never really any serious consideration of putting the memorial anyplace else. "It was really important to the families to have it here, where the event happened," Dolan said.

Once visitors arrive, the park's layout is designed to emphasize both the individual loss of each victim and the scope and scale of the 184 deaths.

The main feature is 184 cantilevered benches, each sitting atop a small reflecting pool and dedicated to one of the 184 people killed. The benches are arranged by year of birth, reminding visitors that the attacks claimed lives both young and old, from 3-year-old Dana Falkenberg to 71-year-old retired Navy Capt. John D. Yamnicky.

"It's very sobering," said Sue Matis of Mosinee, Wis., who was visiting while on vacation. "You see the ages, and the magnitude of it really hits you."

No one keeps an exact count of how many people visit the memorial, but Emily Cassell, director of Arlington County's convention and visitor services, said the estimates run between 225,000 and 250,000 annually.

AT THE MEMORIAL

Educating tourists about the memorial falls to the docents, who are frequently there during weekends and sometimes on weekdays as well. Many are family members of people who lost their lives in the attack.

"The visitors are really and truly pulled in" when they speak to a docent with a personal connection to Sept. 11, Dolan said. "I've been out here, hugged by people I've never even met before."

Visitors sometimes treat the grounds almost reverentially, sometimes leery of sitting on the benches for fear that it's inappropriate. But Dolan said the park is designed to be interactive -- kids sometimes slide down the sloped benches, and that's OK. Pentagon workers bring their lunches out on nice days and sit on the benches, and that's OK, too. -- MATTHEW BARAKAT

IF YOU GO

THE NATIONAL 9/11 PENTAGON MEMORIAL

1 Rotary Rd. on the Pentagon Reservation, Arlington, Va.

pentagonmemorial.org

ADMISSION Free

GETTING THERE Visitors are encouraged to take mass transit, using the Pentagon stop on the yellow and blue lines of Metrorail. The Pentagon also is served by bus routes. Drivers to the memorial can park for a fee at the Fashion Centre mall at Pentagon City.

SHANKSVILLE, PA., MEMORIAL

Shanksville is a tiny village far from major cities and cultural attractions, but the crash of Flight 93 in a field there on Sept. 11, 2001, has brought visitors from around the world to the national park site that now marks the spot where the hijacked plane came down.

And some of these visitors are finding other things to do while they're in the area. They're combining a pilgrimage to the Flight 93 National Memorial with trips to attractions like Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural masterpiece Fallingwater or the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, 90 minutes away by car.

ABOUT THE MEMORIAL

The Flight 93 National Memorial is shielded by trees, but much of the park is surprisingly open, in part because of the site's former history as a coal strip mine. The Park Service has done extensive landscaping work, with more planned.

As many as 150,000 people a year visit the site where the plane -- headed for the U.S. Capitol -- was brought down through the actions of its 40 passengers and crew. On a recent week, a sign-in book for the memorial listed visitors from California, Arizona, Missouri, England and the Czech Republic. Huge crowds are expected for next weekend's dedication and commemoration to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The park is circular. Visitors walk along a dark concrete path finished so the surface looks like tree bark, past the woods where the plane crashed, until they reach the Wall of Names, which consists of vertical slabs of white stone that memorialize the 40.

FUTURE EXPANSION

Fundraising continues for another phase of construction that will include a so-called "Tower of Voices," featuring 40 large wind chimes. In total, the park will consist of about 2,200 acres, though some areas will not be open to the public, such as the actual crash site. -- KEVIN BEGOS

IF YOU GO

FLIGHT 93 NATIONAL MEMORIAL

Off U.S. Route 30, Shanksville, Pa.

814-893-6322, nps.gov/flni

OPEN 9 a.m.-7 p.m. April 1 to mid-October (winter hours, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.)

ADMISSION Free