Highlights include the State Room, State House Library and the Royal Charter Museum.

You don't need a lobbyist's badge, a lawmaker's license plate or a piece of special-interest legislation for a reason to visit the Rhode Island State House.

The marble-domed seat of state government is filled with history from its own 113-year history atop Providence's Smith Hill and Rhode Island's 17th-century Colonial beginnings.

If you want to watch legislative sausage-making in action, you'll need to visit Tuesday through Thursday afternoons, from January to early June. (House and Senate sessions start around 4 p.m. and committee hearings carry on into the night.)

But if you want to soak up some McKim, Mead and White American Renaissance architecture, or read what people were saying during the reign of King George III, any weekday between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. will do. Guided tours are available every hour.

Here are a few of the highlights:

The State Room

For more than a century, Rhode Island governors have welcomed official guests, signed important bills and delivered bad news to the media in this ornate second-floor chamber with a giant portrait of George Washington over one fireplace.

The portrait, painted by Rhode Island native Gilbert Stuart, is matched on the opposite end of the room by a portrait of Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene. You can see Greene's sword and his uniform epaulettes in a case nearby.

Royal Charter Museum

See the documents that started it all.

The newly renovated Royal Charter Museum on the first floor, a few steps from the gift shop, features colonial artifacts and the 1638 agreement between Roger Williams and Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi for the land that is now Providence.

And the centerpiece of the museum is the Royal Charter of 1663, in which King Charles II of England recognized Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and granted settlers the unprecedented right of religious freedom.

See if you can pick out the phrase "lively experiment" in the text.

The Library

You expect to see old tomes lining the walls of the spectacular, three-tiered, wood-paneled State House Library.

You don't expect to see moon rocks — or lunar pebbles anyway — but there they are, in a stand by the doorway.

The samples are one of two moon souvenirs brought back to Earth and donated to Rhode Island from the Apollo 11 mission. The others are located in the state archives in downtown Providence.

Speaking of the archives, the secretary of state's office brings a rotating series of exhibits from the archives to the State House Library. The current exhibit includes letters and documents related to women's suffrage.

State House tours leave from the library.

The dome

If you've lived in Rhode Island long, you've probably heard that the State House dome is the fourth largest self-supported marble dome in the world, behind St. Peter's in the Vatican, the Minnesota State Capitol and the Taj Mahal.

The size of the dome can be appreciated from many points in Providence, but the mural depicting Rhode Island history on the underside of the dome, which was newly restored last summer, needs to be appreciated from the inside. The third-floor balcony is the best vantage point.

The circular mural includes Roger Williams and the Narragansetts, of course, but also has a scene dedicated to religious freedom and another with images of the textile industry.

The chambers

The third floor is also the place to access the House and Senate galleries, which provide a bird's-eye view of where the lawmaking magic happens on days when the legislature is in session.

Down on the floor, lawmakers sit at vintage wooden desks — oak in the House, mahogany in the Senate — now outfitted with electronic voting machines and tablet computers.

If you look closely, you'll notice the Senate desks are scratched and worn in the front from encountering decades' worth of lawmaker belt buckles.

— panderson@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7384

On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_