The Ohio Statehouse is a beautiful building. The crown jewel of downtown Columbus – itself a reasonably pretty place, although mostly empty on the day of my visit – it gleams white behind carefully planted flowers and trees. Its rotunda, built without a full dome, is iconic atop the columned facade.

Inside, the building is spotless, a museum unto itself, with beautiful artwork and well-kept chambers inside a truly attractive physical space. And below ground is a small, but well done, museum about the political history of the state and its government.

Visiting on a Friday with the legislature not meeting, the building is peaceful, the silence broken only by numerous school groups being shown around by uniformed staff (or volunteers; I can’t tell). That serenity stands in sharp contrast to the actual functioning of the Ohio state government in 2025, a combative scene of heavily gerrymandered district representatives with no need to ever have a meaningful election trying their very best to turn their state into a paradise for white, straight, Christian males at the expense of all others.

A beautiful building. Ugliness occupying it. Yes, this is Ohio in today’s era.

To say that the Ohio Statehouse is the most important thing in Columbus is not exaggeration. Columbus was founded as a city just to host it. In 1812, the new state of Ohio (established in 1803) needed a capital, and a city was desired that would be in the center of the state’s geography. This site, at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers, was chosen, across from the small town of Franklinton. The first spaces established in the new city would become Capitol Square.

The current Statehouse opened in 1861, a classical revival building with mighty columns in front and a large cupola above a central rotunda. In its early years, the Ohio Supreme Court also met in the building, though today the judicial branch of the state government has moved out, leaving the gubernatorial offices and both houses of the state legislature.

Subsequent additions have added new wings, though stylistically they have tried to maintain some consistency.

For visitors to the Ohio Statehouse, the central rotunda is easily the most awe-inspiring feature. This sits below the cupola, but appears to be a dome from the inside. It is done in pastels with stained glass, giving a light and airy feel to the space.

Both chambers of the legislature can be visited, the General Assembly via an observation gallery above, and the Senate just by walking in the main doors, although it isn’t apparent whether random visitors are allowed in the Senate room during a session of that body. (On the day of my visit, neither chamber is in session.)

The two rooms look pretty much the same.

A lower level museum held in the Ohio Statehouse traces the history of the state and its government, and it is here that a visitor who is even tangentially up to date on the current politics of Ohio will begin to have troubles.

Ohio has gone through two constitutions, one in 1812 and a second – which is the document still in force although with two centuries of amendments – in 1851. Both documents are, at least in part, on display in the museum, with some highlights excerpted out in an exhibit surrounding the case. To be fair, here the museum does a good job of admitting some early shortcomings, like the 1812 constitution’s renouncing of slavery but refusing to give voting rights to non-whites, or the early requirement of the Ohio Supreme Court to meet once per year in each county of the state, of which there are now almost 90.

But the museum then continues to espouse lofty ideals, things that Ohio currently does not live up to. For instance, a display on legislative districts discusses the principle of one person and one vote, while Ohio is today one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the union. Ideals of diversity are belied by the makeup of the current Ohio Senate, which has – from a photo board outside the chamber – just four minority members of 35, and only nine women.

A central room of the museum includes quotations from politicians, philosophers, and important documents in history, done again on these important themes. Tolerance, for example, is belied by current Ohio legislative efforts to strip women of their bodily freedom and current US Vice President and former US Senator from Ohio JD Vance’s blatant lies that Somali immigrants in the state are eating people’s pets.

And just this June, the Ohio GOP announced an attempt to override their own citizen-approved state constitutional amendment allowing access to abortion, fertilization treatments, and birth control. Sadly, this is completely in character for a state party that has been moving toward the radically extreme for decades, but searching for workarounds to overrule the will of an absolute majority of citizenry is a new low.

All through the building, both touring the governmental chambers and the museum, are Ohio schoolchildren, here at the Statehouse as part of their state history and politics curricula. I wonder what they are being told by the staff and volunteers conducting their tours. I wonder if the children from minority populations realize that they are not represented effectively in this state, and that if the current political leadership has its way, they will be even less so in the future.

It is a far cry from the values the museum tries to teach, and from the values of President Abraham Lincoln, whose 1859 visit to the Ohio Statehouse is honored on multiple plaques throughout the building.

A pretty building. An ugly current state of politics. Beautiful ideals, and a terrible direction of the state government. A visit to the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus offers views on all of these things.

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